Tomahawks into Syria as Turkey remains chicken

Just so we are clear on this – There is a HUGE difference between President George W. Bush attacking al-Qaeda (‘War on Terror’) within Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, and what President Obama is doing now.
The most notable difference is President Bush had authorization and agreement, with each sovereign nation, to attack the terror entity within it’s border; Obama has no such agreement with Syria.
And remember, according to President Obama 2013, the “2003 George Bush war on terror is over“.   OVER!   Not to mention the post 9-11 AUMF was specifically only for al-Qaeda, and ISIS is admittedly, by Obama and al-Qaeda, not al-Qaeda.   So what exactly is the “legal authority” President Obama is using?

Secretary of State John Kerry would not answer that question to congress last week. Senior White House National Security and Foreign Policy advisor Susan Rice would not answer that question last Friday. White House spokesperson Josh Earnest would also not answer that question last Friday.  President Obama’s chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, would not answer that question on Saturday, and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power would not answer that question on Sunday.
The mysterious “legal authority” is said to exist, but has never been outlined.
Yet on Monday the attacks began.
Under what legal authority? We are not under attack, this is not a defensive decision. This is 100% offensive. (more…)

There’s a big difference between thinking of the IRS Targeting Scandal as originating within the IRS, and reconciling the origin as actually within the DOJ.
When you make that mental reconciliation, it all begins to make sense:

How can the DOJ conduct an investigation into unlawful aspects of the IRS targeting of specific 501(c)(4) groups, when the DOJ is the initiating body for the illegality they are seeking to investigate ?

Qatar owns Al-Jazeera media as the PR campaign to manipulate Western public opinion. Qatar finances The Muslim Brotherhood, and the newest terror group, Libyan Dawn. It’s one of the biggest open secrets in Washington DC, and yet no-one does anything. Qatar’s Ruling head is Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

George Stephanopolous is horrible for obvious reasons. Again, WHAT LEGAL BASIS ?

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the media seem to be avoiding a rather obvious question:

Under what authority is President Obama claiming to be able to fly into Syria to attack NI-ISIS?

You might have noted a few, well, probing flights recently outlined by media of Russian incursions into U.S. and NATO qualified defense zone airspace. Yet interestingly no-one seems to be connecting the dots between the Russian pokes, and Obama’s proclaimed Syrian strategy. Remember, Russia is an ally the “state of” Syria, and Bashir Assad.
The U.S. State Department, and the U.S. White House team, have been very careful to note they will not be coordinating any offensive NI-ISIS engagements with Iran or Syria.
For all current intents and purposes the matter with Iran is a non-issue, however the matter with Syria is an entirely divergent situation altogether.
As far as we can tell there is no precedent for hostile U.S. action into the sovereign territory of another nation, even to target terror threats, without a specific agreement in hand before the action. (more…)

…a senior Army official told me court-martialing Bergdahl would “make the president look bad.” In spite of damning evidence against him, the official expects Pentagon brass to separate him from the military with a less-than-honorable discharge, sparing Obama total embarrassment….

(New York Post) Three and a half months have come and gone and the Pentagon has offered no clarity on what happened to alleged Army deserter and Taliban collaborator Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Fellow soldiers and other critics fear the military’s now-delayed investigation is shaping up to be a whitewash.
The case has become a political powder keg for President Obama.
Since he traded five imprisoned Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, the US Government Accountability Office has declared the swap illegal, and nearly two dozen House Democrats have joined Republicans in officially condemning the move for making “Americans less safe.” (more…)

Shepard Smith was supposed to interview Josh Earnest today, but some guy who is still a journalist and looks remarkably like Shep Smith showed up and replaced him.
Watch this, and stay with it…. the last minute is well, pretty awesome.

Washington DC thinks we are stupid, they really do.  The professional political class has yet to grasp the understanding that “WWW” as a prefix in the internet stands for “World Wide Web”.   We are quite capable of connecting, collecting and digesting information directly from the heart of the issues being debated.
Despite all the DC pontifications, obfuscations, and professional talking points to the contrary, we know in Syria there are two options, support Bashir Assad or support radical Islamists, that’s it.   There is no mysterious “moderate” third option; the “rebels” are radical islamists.
President Obama and  Republican Senator John McCain are making the same argument in 2014 toward Syria they both made in 2011 toward Libya.   2014’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, is merely repeating the 2011 meme sold by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – the difference is within the audience.

In Libya 2011 there were two options, support Moamuar Kaddafi, or support radical Islamists under the nom de plume “rebels“.   The White House supported the “rebels“, Kaddafi was killed, and as a consequence right now in Libya chaos reigns as the islamists, now collected under the banner “Libyan Dawn”, are destroying the country.
(more…)

It should be remembered that John McCain hired a known paid advocate for Syria, Elizabeth O’Bagy, as part of his staff after she was fired by The Institute For The Study of War for lying about her professional credentials.   A year ago we wrote:

 … So knowing she’s a liar, knowing that she’s in bed with the “rebels”, that she put out conflicting accounts, that she whitewashed the “rebels” into a more “moderate” force, this woman is worthy, according to John McCain, of being hired to his staff.   This is so unbelievable, it makes one think that there is some greater personal underlying reason operating here….

As you review this article it’s wise to keep in mind that Elizabeth O’Bagy was the one who set up the John McCain visit to Syria.

(Via Breitbart) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his aides swear the Syrian “rebels” he was pictured last year with weren’t ISIS members or supporters, and the mainstream media is by and large buying the 2008 GOP presidential nominee’s story.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has endured brutal criticism—media fact checkers, reporters, and political figures have shredded him—for questioning just who McCain posed with.
But a closer look at the situation tells perhaps a different story than McCain’s office or the mainstream media have pushed. (more…)

We had a strong suspicion Denis McDonough and Valerie Jarrett selected General John Allen (retired) for the ISIS campaign, because the White House knew Allen could be leveraged and easily controlled. The embarrassing files on Allen (retained for such a purpose) allow the administration to strong-arm compliance.

President Obama appears to have a singular goal in Syria, remove Bashir Assad.

Combating Sunni ISIS is not an objective President Obama, or Recep Erdogan, would EVER support or be comfortable with.

(Wall Street Journal)  The president hasn’t yet given the green light for an attack on Islamic State militants in Syria, but the U.S. military campaign against the group there is being designed to allow President Barack Obama to exert a high degree of personal control–going so far as to require that the military obtain presidential signoff for strikes.
The requirements for the strikes will be far more stringent than those targeting Islamic State in Iraq, at least at first. U.S. officials say it is an attempt to limit the threat the U.S. could be dragged more deeply into the Syrian civil war. (more…)