CIA-armed militias are shooting at Pentagon-armed ones in Syria

This is the same establishment brain trust that is desperately trying to drive Trump out of office.  Thank you, Obama-era geniuses. 

And how's Libya coming now that Khaddaffi' overthrown?  Oh, they're selling black Africans as slaves now?  Never mind.

We have the worst Ruling Class in history.

James Carafano: Syria cease-fire follows completely appropriate actions by Trump – Avoids needless bloodshed

All the best people told me that there would be a horrible bloodshed. 

By the way, other than long shots of artillery fire, has the press actually shown the mass atrocities that were predicted? 

And how about the establishment of the ISIS Caliphate?  

All the horrors that were predicted have so far failed to show up.   They still may, but so far all we have is the people around Washington with their hair on fire because Trump pulled some troops out of harm's way.

Babylon Bee: "Congress Claims Situation In Syria Is Bad But Not Bad Enough For Them To Actually Declare War"

Republicans and Democrats crossed the aisle in the Senate to slam the withdrawal, saying the grim, tragic situation over there was "devastating" but "not quite devastating enough for us to actually do something about it."

"It's really bad over there and Trump is really evil for not sending more troops and fighting Turkey," said Senator Mitt Romney. "I mean, just to clarify, it's not bad enough for Congress to actually do its job and declare war. But still, it's pretty bad."

"Did I mention Trump is evil?"

Don Surber: "How the media blew the Syria story"

This morning at 8, BBC posted a story, "Turkey's Erdogan 'threw Trump's Syria letter in bin.'" It was Fake News.

This afternoon at 2, President Donald John Trump announced Erdogan agreed to a cease-fire along the Syrian border.

Once again, the press got the story all wrong. President Trump knew what he was doing and succeeded where his predecessors had failed. He removed American troops in order to bring peace to a section of the Middle East. He used tariffs, not soldiers, to force the issue.

The Washington press corps covering President Trump is incompetent and corrupt as it violates the public trust by deliberately trying to sabotage the man the American people elected president.

President Trump's mediation of the Kurd-Turk dispute is award-worthy. The press blew the story by attacking our president. Amid all the false reports of coming calamity and impending genocide, I advised readers to Trust Trump. He earned it.

And of course I was right because getting President Trump right is the easiest thing in the world to do. Just accept that he is better informed than the press, and he knows what he is doing.

But the media is a bunch of garbage peddlers. You have your garbage collectors who help keep America clean and safe, and then you have your garbage producers at CNN and the like.

The fog of war expelled by the American media was a historic embarrassment to anyone who is now or has ever been a member of the Fourth Estate. Obamanauts -- including generals -- were allowed to say whatever they wanted to try to undermine President Trump's peace efforts without bothering (in most cases) to allow the Trump administration to respond.

Crazy talk of genocide filled the cable airwaves.

ABC was caught using training footage from Kentucky to depict a non-existent "Slaughter in Syria."

Has it issued an on-air apology or correction yet?

Now that a deal has been cut, I expect the media to take potshots at it before dropping the subject entirely. Once again, President Trump has achieved the impossible and the media will deny him credit because they did everything they could to prevent peace from breaking out.

Read the whole thing.

Syrian suspicions

Forgive me if I allow my suspictions of what we know and when we know it to interfere with the good feeling that most of us have about Trump's decision to bomb the Syrian air base in response to a chemical attack.

As I said in a comment recently:

If Assad is responsible, this will change his mind. But ...

And here is Scott Adams, who has been more right than anyone I know about Trump back to when he first announced his candidacy. He points out that Trump exaggerates. Even his supporters - and I am one - do not take him literally.  We know when he exaggerates for effect.  But we take him seriously.  (When he said he was "wiretapped" and he was called  a bald faced liar by the press it was the press that was wrong.)  His detractors say that he's a serial liar. But he's believed in this instance, because people want this to be true.

Scott Adams:

The odd exception to our universal understanding of President Trump’s mode of operation is his claim that he is totally certain Assad was responsible for the chemical attack on his own people last week. The President’s critics and most of his supporters believe President Trump when he suggests that our military can track any plane in Syria and know what that plane did to whom.

Do you believe that?

I have it on good authority that the United States can track and identify aircraft in Syria. But does that mean we are watching (or recording) every plane at every minute, and we also know what ordinance they dropped?

Do you believe, for example, that our military can identify Syrian jets doing a normal bombing run at the same time as a hobby-sized ISIS drone drops some sarin gas in the blast zone? Can our satellites see that?

Or suppose rebels lobbed an artillery shell with sarin into a village that was being bombed at the same time. Would our satellites and drones and AWACS pick up the incoming round?

Maybe.

But my experience of life is that literally nothing works that well.

Or to put it another way, if we could do shit like that, the war would be over in a week. We’d know who every player on the ground was, and what they were doing, at all times. Heck, if we can detect a hobby-sized drone with a gas canister strapped to its belly from outer space, we don’t need boots-on-the-ground to beat ISIS. We can kill everyone who needs killing from the sky.

Like Adams, I question whether Assad actually is responsible. The events look staged and remind me of the theatrical productions that the Palestinians produced to make them look like the victims of the Israelis. This is too much like "suicide by cop" on the part of Assad who was winning without chemical weapons.

I also suspect that Trump knows this but is willing to play along by bombing a single airbase. As a result, Assad has lost little. The American people get a new respect for a powerful leader. The Democrats and the press (but I repeat myself) are rallying to his actions and the Loony-Left-Resistance is pulling up its shorts. Putin is shown to be running a second rate power. China wonders what will happen if they don't rein in North Korea. And the "Trump-Conspired-With-Putin-to-steal-the-election" look foolish. And Obama is neutered.  Better yet, they are admitting that they lied about their "success" in removing WMDs from Syria.  

All in all a big win. It's like clearing the table with one shot.

Obama's Syrian Adventure - monumental screw-up

Syria army bids to recover losses to IS after deadly US-led raid

Beirut (AFP) - Syrian troops counterattacked against the Islamic State group around a key eastern airbase Sunday after a US-led coalition air strike killed scores of soldiers forcing a retreat, military sources said.

The Pentagon said that coalition pilots had believed they were hitting IS and had halted the raid as soon as Damascus ally Moscow informed commanders that army positions were coming under attack.

But Damascus reacted angrily to the deadly strike, which forced troops to pull back from two strategic hilltops overlooking the besieged airbase on the outskirts of the city of Deir Ezzor.

"The Syrian army has returned to the offensive," a military source told AFP on Sunday.

"After the American raids, it withdrew from several positions but now it has gone back on the attack."

GERMANY BOMB HORROR: 12 injured as Syrian asylum seeker blows himself up outside wine bar

Another opportunity for Obama to proclaim the "Island-has-nothing-to-do-with-it."

Investigators are probing links to terrorist organisations and have not ruled out the possibility the bomber was an Islamic extremist.

Herrmann said the contents of the Syrian man’s backpack could have killed many more people, with the material used to make the bomb coming from metal items used in “wood manufacturing” – such as nails and screws.

Herrmann said: “It is terrible that someone abuses the opportunity to find protection here in such a way. I am appalled by that.

“We have to do all we can so that such violence in our country committed by asylum seekers who have come to our country will not spread any further.”

 

Obama Blames Libya and Syria on British PM David Cameron

Nothing is ever his fault.

Barack Obama has sharply criticised David Cameron for the UK’s role in allowing Libya to become a “shit show” after the fall of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, in an unprecedented attack on a British leader by a serving US President.

Mr Obama said that following a successful military intervention to aid rebels during the 2011 Arab Spring revolt, Libya was left to spiral out of control – due largely to the inaction of America’s European allies.

In a candid US magazine interview, Mr Obama said: “When I go back and I ask myself what went wrong… there’s room for criticism, because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up.”

His part of the plan went great. Qaddafi was killed. That's when the plan came apart because Barack's problem is that he trusted the Europeans too much.  Don't be surprised if he ends up blaming Benghazi on Cameron.

And then there's his Syrian Red Line. Poor Barack could not make good on his treat because of the British:

Mr Obama also said Mr Cameron’s failures had affected his decision not to enforce a “red line” over President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons during the Syrian civil war. The President had planned a strike against Assad’s forces in August 2013, following a deadly sarin gas attack by the regime on civilians in a Damascus suburb. The strike was called off at the 11th hour. One “major factor” in the decision, the President said, “was the failure of Cameron to obtain the consent of his Parliament” for military action.

The only surprise in this list of blame-shifting is that he didn't blame George Bush.

DRUDGE on Obama's Failure in Middle East

Russia builds up Syria airbase as Obama policy suffers setback...

Russia and Iran throw weight behind Assad...

Moscow pressed its military buildup at a new airbase in Syria Saturday, as Washington admitted rebels it trained surrendered ammunition and equipment to Al-Qaeda in a fresh US policy setback.

If you wanted to re-build Russia's influence outside its borders what would you do that Obama has not done?

Barack Obama, Geopolitical Genius

In case how Obama's plan to help Syrian rebels is working out ...

BEIRUT (Reuters) – One of the main western-backed rebel groups announced on Sunday that it had dissolved itself and joined a larger Islamist alliance, weeks into a battle which saw it lose ground and men to more powerful al Qaeda insurgents. Hazzm is one of the last remnants of non-jihadist opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria, much of which has been seized by the Nusra Front and Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda that controls roughly a third of Syria.

SECURING SYRIA'S WEAPONS MAY REQUIRE TROOPS

To keep his pledge that there would be no boots on the ground, they could wear loafers.

"I'm not going to speculate on who may or may not be participating in a process that may or may not take place," Little said. "We've got to see where the process goes" before the U.S. military considers involvement, he said.

OK then. We're re-assured.

Putin finds his thrill by grabbing Obama’s blueberries and squeezing hard

Mark Steyn on Obama, Putin and American Ineffectualism

Every American ally is cringing with embarrassment at the amateurishness of the last month.

But at this rate, American allies are dropping right and left so fewer are cringing.  Meanwhile Obama's an actor who has lost his way in the script and is ad-libbing his lines.

This is what happens when you elect someone because he looks cool standing next to Jay-Z. Putin is cool mainly in the sense that Yakutsk in February is. In American pop-culture terms, he is a faintly ridiculous figure, with his penchant for homoerotic shirtlessness, his nipples entering the room like an advance security team; the celebrities he attracts are like some rerun channel way up the end of the dial: Goldie Hawn was in the crowd when Putin, for no apparent reason, sang “I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill,” which Goldie seemed to enjoy. In reality, Putin finds his thrill by grabbing Obama’s blueberries and squeezing hard. Cold beats cool.

Charles Crawford, Britain’s former ambassador in Serbia and Poland, called last Monday “the worst day for U.S. and wider Western diplomacy since records began.” Obama set it in motion at a press conference last year by drawing his famous “red line.” Unlike, say, the undignified scrums around the Canadian and Australian prime ministers, Obama doesn’t interact enough with the press for it to become normal or real. So at this rare press conference he was, as usual, playing a leader who’s giving a press conference. The “red line” line sounds like the sort of thing a guy playing a president in a movie would say — maybe Harrison Ford in Air Force One or Michael Douglas in The American President. It never occurred to him that out there in the world beyond the Republic of Cool he’d set an actual red line and some dime-store dictator would cross it with impunity. So, for most of the last month, the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment has assured us that, regardless of whether it will accomplish anything, we now have to fire missiles at a sovereign nation because “America’s credibility is at stake.”

That's the problem when a feckless idiot becomes an nation's leader.  When he commits a serious blunder the establishment feels compelled to support him even if they disdain him because the country is at stake.

And, of course in John Kerry we have a Secretary of State who is equal to the task of making the idiot Obama look smart in comparison. Trying to simultaneously appeal to both the doves and the hawks he promised a strike that no one would notice, using a phrase that will go down in the history of stupidity: "unbelievably small."

John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, capped his own impressive four-decade accumulation of magnificently tin-eared sound bites by assuring his audience that the military devastation the superpower would wreak on Assad would be “unbelievably small.” Actually, the problem is that it will be all too believably small.

In a swipe at the wanna-bees in the Republican party like Rubio and McCain, Steyn has a message:

America is in danger of being the first great power to be laughed off the world stage. When the president’s an irrelevant narcissist and his secretary of state’s a vainglorious buffoon, Marco Rubio shouldn’t be telling the world don’t worry, the other party’s a joke, too.

 

At this point, it would be smart for those on the Right to distance themselves from Team Obama instead of trying to cover for him.  It's a strategic blunder to pretend that Obama's bluster has to be defended because he's President.  Separate the man from the nation; they are not one and the same. 

Syrian "Rebels" and Executions

A young Syrian man kneels blindfolded before anti-regime rebels publicly executed him in the town of Keferghan, near Aleppo, on August 31, 2013.

Later they cut his throat.

These are the Obama administrations "allies" with John McCain and Lindsay Graham in full throated support.

It usually it takes a lopsided military defeat to lose this much prestige and influence in just 48 hours.

Stephen Green on the Obama speech.  Read the whole thing.

It appears that Obama has managed to lose the Middle East to Russia, and Russia didn't have to fire a shot. Sun Tzu would be proud of Putin.

OTOH I feel like a spectator to my country's defeat.

DRUDGE Headlines - with Detail - on Obama's Syrian Fiasco

Fournier: Obama Fumbling, Flip-flopping, Marble-mouthing...

The good news is we're not at war. The bad news is … almost everything else about President Obama's handling of Syria – the fumbling and flip-flopping and marble-mouthing – undercut his credibility, and possibly with it his ability to lead the nation and world.

NOONAN: 'We've never had a presidential speech like this!'

The president has backed away from a military strike in Syria. But he can’t acknowledge this or act as if it is true. He is acting and talking as if he’s coolly, analytically, even warily contemplating the Russian proposal and the Syrian response. The proposal, he must know, is absurd. ...

It will be a White House address in which a president argues for an endeavor he is abandoning. It will be a president appealing for public support for an action he intends not to take.

We’ve never had a presidential speech like that!

Milbank: Massive muddle...

At 9 p.m. Tuesday, President Obama, in his address to the nation, said that he had “asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force.”

This contradicted what his secretary of state, John Kerry, had said in testimony to Congress just 11 hours earlier. “We’re not asking Congress not to vote,” Kerry told the House Armed Services Committee. “I’m not asking [for] delay,” he added later.

Kerry can be forgiven for being at odds with the president. The president, in the space of his 16-minute address, was often at odds with himself. He spent the first 12 minutes arguing for the merits of striking Syria — and then delivered the news that he was putting military action on hold.

He promised that it would be “a limited strike” without troops on the ground or a long air campaign, yet he argued that it was the sort of blow that “no other nation can deliver.” He argued that “we should not be the world’s policeman” while also saying that because of our “belief in freedom and dignity for all people,” we cannot “look the other way.” He asserted that what Bashar al-Assad did is “a danger to our security” while also saying that “the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military.”

AP: Obama's Syria case still lacks proof...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama voiced his conviction Tuesday night that Syrian President Bashar Assad was to blame for deadly chemical attacks against civilians, but again he offered no proof.

A look at his remarks to the nation, seeking support for a military strike against Syria, and how they compare with the facts as publicly known:

OBAMA: "We know the Assad regime was responsible. ... The facts cannot be denied."

THE FACTS: The Obama administration has not laid out proof Assad was behind the attack.

The administration has cited satellite imagery and communications intercepts, backed by social media and intelligence reports from sources in Syria, as the basis for blaming the Assad government. But the only evidence the administration has made public is a collection of videos it has verified of the victims. The videos do not demonstrate who launched the attacks.

Administration officials have not shared the satellite imagery they say shows rockets and artillery fire leaving government-held areas and landing in 12 rebel-held neighborhoods outside Damascus where chemical attacks were reported. Nor have they shared transcripts of the Syrian officials allegedly warning units to ready gas masks or discussing how to handle U.N. investigators after it happened.

The White House has declined to explain where it came up with the figure of at least 1,429 dead, including 400 children - a figure far higher than estimates by nongovernmental agencies such as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has counted only victims identified by name, with a current total of 502. In his remarks, Obama more generally accused Assad's forces of gassing to death "over 1,000 people, including hundreds of children."

RAND PAUL: CALL OFF VOTE...

On Tuesday, as the Obama administration ramped up its lobbying on Capitol Hill, Sen. Rand Paul convened a group of some 30 lawmakers skeptical of a military intervention in Syria. The group -- which included Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN) and two dozen others -- discussed different strategies for staving off a military intervention and the desire to call off a vote to authorize military force.

"I think everybody is hopeful that putting the vote on a permanent hold would be the best route forward," Paul said in an interview with The Cable.

Hillary stance raises familiar risks...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton has been in this spot before.

As a senator in 2002, she endorsed military action in Iraq, a decision that came back to haunt her in her failed White House bid six years later.

Now, the former secretary of state and potential 2016 presidential candidate is risking the possibility of a similar political situation in a future campaign with her support of President Barack Obama's call for a U.S.-led military strike in Syria as punishment for the use of chemical weapons.

"An unmitigated clusterfuck"

Those are not our words, we are much more polite.  They are found in this article in the New Republic headlined: The Syria Solution: Obama Got Played by Putin and Assad.

Last night, President Barack Obama, who, just over a week ago, had said he was ready to act, tells the nation's cable watchers that he's now discussing this bogus plan with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that he's "going to take this very seriously" while also not letting up on the drumbeat of military strikes while. On Tuesday, Syria said it had accepted Russia's proposal and France said it would seek the UN Security Council's backing for the proposal.

This, in other words, is no light at the end of the tunnel. This, to borrow a phrase from a Congressional staffer at his wits' end, "is an unmitigated clusterfuck."

Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons, German paper says

BERLIN — Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.

The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.

Here's a dilemma: who are you going to believe, a Muslim-loving corrupt liar, or the President of Syria?

DRUDGE on Assad

Assad Gives First Interview...
'Calm'...
Denies Attack...
CBS Only Net Inside Damascus...
POLL: Support: 27%; Oppose: 71%...

You Go to War with the Clowns You’ve Got

-Oh-oh! As reported by both leftist and righteous on-line sources, Syrian rebels have admitted to using chemical weapons in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden’s directive to kill women and children.

From WND World

A video has emerged of an opposition rebel militant in Syria apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.

The individual in the clip, Nadeem Baloosh, is a member of an insurgent group called Riyadh Al Abdeen, which is active in the Latakia area of Syria.

Baloosh speaks of “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess,” before going on to state, “We decided to harm them through their women and kids.”

An Army of Clowns: Harry, Gibbsy, JJ, Jean Carré, Big Guy, Axe-man and Joey

 

The bottom line: don't bluff about war.

By all accounts, even the highly regarded John F. Kennedy, who was pretty green at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, sought advice from those with more military experience than himself. He clandestinely consulted with Dwight D. Eisenhower to gain insight and perspective on how best to proceed with the deathly serious situation of Russian nuclear warheads headed for Cuba. Eisenhower coached the young President thorough the negotiations and mechanics of the Cuban blockade. At one point Kennedy seemed to waver, asking his mentor, “but what do I do if the Russians call my bluff?” To which Eisenhower replied, “You’re not bluffing, John.”

If you think he’s down now, just watch him get bummed out by Congress saying “no”.

Richard Fernandez

And to begin a war when in all appearances at a low ebb is to court disaster. You should ideally be in possession of all your marbles at the start of something like that. But Obama has reached the sorry stage of dejection that only the most soundly defeated generals experience when they looked down at a shrunken position. He is whupped. He’s Gamelin before Rundstedt. He’s Perceval marching in his shorts in a toothbrush mustache to a grinning Yamashita in his two-toned Imperial Japanese Army uniform.

Read the whole thing.