This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

The growing case for impeachment of Obama: Illegally conducting war against Libya.  [Scroll down]  "In the case of Libya, the president had no congressional authority whatsoever," Fein said.  "The whole thing is insane.  And the executive doesn't care because all the time that conflict ensues, that just means more executive power.  That's exactly what the Founding Fathers feared.  "President Obama just totally flouted the whole thing and basically said through his various memos, 'I don't need congressional authority to go to war.'  That was clearly an impeachable offense.  It's clearly gross usurpation of the war power.  Both the Republicans and Democrats have acquiesced in that."

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Doing Job On Libya the Media Won't.  On his MSNBC show this morning [2/21/2013], NBC's senior White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, reported that Republican senator Lindsey Graham had been successful in his quest to see White House emails concerning Libya.  As leverage, Graham threatened to hold up the nomination of John Brennan, who's slated to take over the C.I.A., if the emails weren't released.  According to Todd, there are also memos related to Libya the GOP would like to see.  Thus far, the White House hasn't budged on those.

Gang of Eight immigration reform fails accountability test.  If conservatives should have learned anything from President Obama's first four years in office, it is that this chief executive has no qualms about ignoring the law whenever it becomes an obstacle to his ideological agenda, unless Congress or the federal courts force him to do otherwise.  Exhibit A here is the Libyan bombing, which Obama's own White House lawyers concluded was a "military action" requiring congressional approval under the War Powers Act.  Obama bombed Libya anyway.

How not to run a foreign policy.  In March 2011, President Obama committed the United States to action in Libya that involved roughly 100 cruise missile firings, 12 U.S. Navy ships in the Mediterranean, and 75 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft including B-2 bombers.  And the Libyan case involved no use of chemical warfare by Muammar Qadhafi.  Still, the president saw no reason to seek a congressional vote.  This context makes his claim that he must seek a vote now, in the Syrian case, unintelligible.  It cannot be a matter of principle, or the principle would have applied to intervention in Libya as well.

Nader: Libya mission was 'impeachable offense'.  Ralph Nader on Tuesday said President Obama has committed impeachable offenses dating back to the United States' effort in 2011 to create a no-fly zone in Libya.  Nader, who has previously called for Obama's impeachment, said Congress would not take up articles of impeachment at the time of the Libya mission because it has "abdicated" its responsibility in matters of war.

Unsecured Libyan Weapons Went to Boko Haram.  Add another drop of tragedy to the story of America's reluctant, no-boots-on-the-ground operation in Libya in 2011: Weapons that were never secured after Muammar Gaddafi's ouster made their way to Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist organization now holding hundreds of Nigerian girls.  Last May, Boko Haram staged an attack in the town of Bama, killing 55 innocents and freeing 100 prisoners.

What Obama botched in Libya.  Republicans have a potentially strong case to make against the Obama administration's handling of Libya, as the latest political developments there underline.  On Sunday, a disputed vote in parliament led to the swearing-in of a new prime minister — the sixth since former dictator Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 with the help of U.S. and NATO air forces.  The new leader, an Islamist from the city of Misurata, replaced pro-Western prime minister Ali Zeidan, who was driven out of the country this year after his government proved unable to stop a militia from filling a tanker with stolen oil.

As Libya crumbles, Marines ready boots on the ground in Sicily — The real Benghazi scandal.  Obama attempted a drive-by war — a quick in-and-out regime change, letting other people pick up the pieces after us.  This works if your only goal is deposing a dictator.  It doesn't work if your hope is promoting stability and peace.  Libya is in bad shape, and is a breeding ground for terrorists.

Hillary Clinton and the Decision to Intervene in Libya.  Hillary Clinton has been working full-time to control the story of her time as Secretary of State.  That was the point of her clunky, largely unread book, and the point of her awkward, gaffe-laden book tour.  Clinton argues (plausibly) that she wanted a more activist approach to Syria than that served up by her boss.  She argues (implausibly) that she wasn't really sold on the "reset" with Russia.

Libya crumbles as the United States looks the other way.  Three years after U.S. and NATO forces helped liberate Libya from the dictatorship of Moammar Gaddafi, the country is beginning to look a lot like another nation where an abrupt U.S. disengagement following a civil war led to chaos:  Afghanistan in the 1990s.  In Libya, heavily armed militias are battling for control of Tripoli and Benghazi as well as the international airport.  The United States, France and other Western governments involved in the 2011 military intervention have evacuated their diplomats and abandoned their embassies.  A U.N. mission that was supposed to help broker political accords also left.

Yes, Nixon was bad but Obama is worse.  No man, Nixon's critics assured us, was above the law.  For his transgressions, Richard Nixon was forced from office, evading prosecution only because of a presidential pardon.  Yet by any reasonable measure, Nixon's sins seem venal compared to those of President Barack Obama. [...] Nixon's impeachment included the charge that he evaded Congress' sole authority to declare war by bombing Cambodia.  Yet in Libya Obama said that only he had the inherent authority to decide what is a "war" and that no congressional approval was necessary.  He proceeded to bomb Libya, destroy its military and spend more than a billion dollars in borrowed money in support of one side, who was not aligned with the United States, in a civil war.

50 Things Barack Obama Has Done Wrong:  [#40]  Barack Obama engaged in an illegal war in Libya without the permission of Congress that helped turn that country into an unstable basket case run by radical Islamists.  How bad is it?  America, Libyans and the rest of the world were better off with Muammar Gaddafi in charge.  That's how bad it is.

Libya's chaos is Obama's shame.  President Obama attacked Libya in 2011 without congressional authority, and then shirked any responsibility to help stabilize the country after deposing its dictator.  By 2013, Libya had become a chaotic hellhole mired in a permanent war.  Today it is a new beachhead and recruiting ground for the Islamic State.  Obama's illegal, ill-considered, and immoral drive-by war in Libya ought to be a permanent stain on his presidency.  The recent video of masked ISIS killers beheading 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya deserves to be the emblem of this president's rash foreign policy.

Hillary's Libyan Lies: Muslim Brotherhood, Terror and Dirty Money.  Hillary Clinton has only one accomplishment; the Libyan War.  Bombing Libya in support of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover was Hillary's pet project.  Obama unenthusiastically signed off on a war that he had told members of Congress "is all Secretary Clinton's matter."  The Pentagon fought Hillary's illegal war every step of the way. Both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs opposed Hillary's plan to bomb Libya.

Hillary's Libyan Lies: Muslim Brotherhood, Terror and Dirty Money.  Hillary Clinton has only one accomplishment; the Libyan War.  Bombing Libya in support of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover was Hillary's pet project.  Obama unenthusiastically signed off on a war that he had told members of Congress "is all Secretary Clinton's matter."  The Pentagon fought Hillary's illegal war every step of the way.  Both the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs opposed Hillary's plan to bomb Libya.  One of the Chairman's top aides said that he did not trust the reports coming out of the State Department and the CIA, then controlled by Clinton loyalist Leon Panetta.  When it was clear that the Clintonites had gotten their war on, an irritated Secretary of Defense Gates resigned after failing to stop Hillary's war and was replaced by Panetta.

The Strange Case of the Missing "Moderate" Islamists.  [Scroll down]  Seven months and thousands of more unnecessary deaths later, in October 2011, after an extended military campaign with sustained Western support, Islamist rebel forces conquered the country and shot Qaddafi dead.  Many will recall Hillary Clinton, on October 20, 2011, cackling to a TV news reporter over the death of Qaddafi:  "We came, we saw, he died."  According to recently-released emails, Hillary, at that time, considered the violent 2011 "regime change" in Libya such a triumph that her aides discussed labeling it the start of a "Clinton Doctrine" and a prelude to her Presidential campaign in 2016.  Since then, Libya has been in a constant state of chaos, with factional infighting, no uniting leader and providing a haven for ISIS and other Islamic terrorists; culminating in the September 11, 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi and the death of four Americans.

Hillary Clinton Owns the War in Libya (And Its Horrible Aftermath).  Libya is in chaos.  It's a festering pit of radicalism, anarchy and death, epitomizing everything that can go wrong when Western intervention has no clear long-term purpose.  And a woman who believes she should be president of the United States — ostensibly on the strength of her decision-making abilities as secretary of state — believes that what's going on in Libya is a success.

We cannot allow Hillary Clinton, 'midwife to chaos' and a public liar, to be our next president.  The public record is fairly well-known.  In March 2011, President Barack Obama declared war on Libya.  He did this at the urging of Clinton, who wanted to overthrow Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi so she could boast of having brought "democracy" to the region. [...] Obama did his best to avoid constitutional norms.  He deployed American intelligence agents on the ground, not troops, so he could plausibly deny he had put "boots" on the ground.  He did not seek an American national consensus for war because Libya presented no threat whatsoever to the U.S. He did not obtain a congressional declaration of war as the Constitution requires because he couldn't get one.  And he did not seek United Nations permission, which is required to attack a fellow U.N. member.  Every four years, we entrust awesome power to a person who swears to protect the Constitution.  How could we give that power to a consistent public liar?

A Tough Call on Libya That Still Haunts.  [Hillary] Clinton has pointed to the international military operation as a signature moment in her four-year tenure as the top U.S. diplomat: [...] But Libya today has deteriorated into a virtual failed state run by hundreds of private militias.  Eighteen months after the initial airstrikes, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in attacks by militants on a U.S. diplomatic post and a nearby CIA site in Benghazi.  The North African nation has become a primary outpost for the Islamic State, which has exploited the chaos to take territory, train soldiers and prove its strength outside Syria and Iraq.

When Will Obama Stop Blaming Republicans for His Failures?  In a cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine, President Obama offers astonishing scapegoating for his own foreign-policy disasters.  According to Obama, the deterioration of the ISIS wasteland that is now Libya was not due to improvident administration bombing followed by a hasty departure, but was largely the fault of others.

Obama admits that failing to plan for what would happen in Libya post-Gaddafi is his 'worst mistake as President'.  As he winds down toward the end of his eight-year term as President, Obama has been keen to trumpet all of the things he believes his administration got right during his time at the helm.  But during an interview on Fox News on Sunday [4/10/2016], Obama took a moment to reflect on his biggest mistake while Commander in Chief.  Speaking to host Chris Wallace, Obama said:  'Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was the right thing to do in intervening in Libya.'

Obama's Svengali.  In an interview with FOX News aired on Sunday, April 10, President Barack Obama said that failing to prepare for the aftermath of the ousting of Libyan leader Col.  Muammar Qaddafi was the worst mistake of his presidency.  He added that intervening in Libya nevertheless had been "the right thing to do."  The second part of Obama's statement is incomprehensible.  The intervention was a debacle.  No less than Iraq, Libya would have been better off without the U.S. doing "the right thing."  The country has descended into Hobbesian mayhem.  It is today a paradigmatic "failed state" ruled by competing militias.  Today's Libya is a safe haven for thousands of battle-hardened jihadists.

Hillary's Huge Libya Disaster.  Prior to the February 17, 2011, "Day of Rage," Libya had a national budget surplus of 8.7 percent of GDP in 2010, with oil production at 1.8 million barrels per day, on track to reach its goal of 3 million barrels per day.  Currently, oil production has decreased by over 80 percent.  Following the revolution, the Libyan economy contracted by an estimated 41.8 percent, with a national deficit of 17.1 percent GDP in 2011.  Before the revolution, Libya was a secure, prospering, secular Islamic country and a critical ally providing intelligence on terrorist activity post-September 11, 2001.  Qaddafi was no longer a threat to the United States.  Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly advocated and succeeded in convincing the administration to support the Libyan rebels with a no-fly zone, intended to prevent a possible humanitarian disaster that turned quickly into all-out war.

Forget Trump, Here Are Five Reasons Why Obama Should Have Been Impeached.  [#3] The illegal war in Libya:  Democrats often tried to paint the War in Iraq as an illegal war, despite the fact that Congress approved of it, and used that as a basis for calling for George W. Bush's impeachment.  But, when Obama didn't even go to Congress to start a war in Libya, you didn't hear any such calls.  Even if you forget the disaster that became of Obama's war in Libya, what seems to be forgotten is that we never should have been there in the first place.  Obama knew Congress was not going to approve of military action in Libya, so instead of going to them for an official declaration of war, he went to the United Nations to get authorization to remove Muammar Gadhafi from power — bypassing Congress's authority, and as The Washington Times put it, "dilut[ed] the sovereign power of the United States."  Obama's illegal war in Libya proved to be a total disaster.  The killing of Gaddafi ultimately led to the destabilizing of the country, enabling ISIS to expand their territory there.

So, how'd a Libyan rebel commander get US Anti-Tank missiles?  You may recall back in 2011 as Barack Obama was heading out of the White House one day to take his mother-in-law along on a South American tour, he dropped the news that oh, by the way, he'd ordered U.S. air forces to help European allies oust Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.  He launched this multi-month offensive without congressional approval.  Gadhafi's crime (actually, it hadn't happened yet) was he threatened to shoot civilians if some rebels did not stop fighting.  Obama's proclaimed cover story was a civilized world could not abide such potential threatened violence.  Obama's professed concern for innocent civilians went poof! soon after, as more than 400,000 Syrian civilians were actually killed by government and Russian bombs, guns and chemical weapons ruthlessly putting down a civil war there.  Remember Obama's red line over Syria's chemical weapons?  He threatened military action, but then declared he couldn't really do such a thing without the congressional approval he didn't care about in 2011.

Liberals Still Think Obama Was the 'Best President Ever,' Here Are 14 Reasons Why That's Ridiculous.  [#7] He started an illegal war in Libya.  Democrats often tried to paint the War in Iraq as an illegal war, despite the fact that Congress approved of it, and used that as a basis for calling for George W. Bush's impeachment.  But, when Obama didn't even go to Congress to start a war in Libya, you didn't hear any such calls.  Even if you forget the disaster that became of Obama's war in Libya, what seems to be forgotten is that we never should have been there in the first place.  Obama knew Congress was not going to approve of military action in Libya, so instead of going to them for an official declaration of war, he went to the United Nations to get authorization to remove Muammar Gadhafi from power — bypassing Congress's authority, and as The Washington Times put it, "dilut[ed] the sovereign power of the United States."

Ten Reasons a Post-Presidency Impeachment of Barack Obama Should Happen.  Democrats often tried to paint the War in Iraq as an illegal war, despite the fact that Congress approved of it, and used that as a basis for calling for George W. Bush's impeachment.  But, when Obama didn't even go to Congress to start a war in Libya, you didn't hear any such calls.  Even if you forget the disaster that became of Obama's war in Libya, what seems to be forgotten is that we never should have been there in the first place.  Obama knew Congress was not going to approve of military action in Libya, so instead of going to them for an official declaration of war, he went to the United Nations to get authorization to remove Muammar Gadhafi from power — bypassing Congress's authority, and as The Washington Times put it, "dilut[ed] the sovereign power of the United States."  Obama's illegal war in Libya proved to be a total disaster.  The killing of Gaddafi ultimately led to the destabilizing of the country, enabling ISIS to expand its territory there.

America's First Black President Left A Legacy Of Slavery.  In 2011, egged on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a handful of other advisors, Obama ordered a months-long series of air strikes that facilitated a NATO-backed regime change campaign that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.  Rather than ushering in liberal democracy and prosperity, the ouster of Gaddafi left the country fractured, with two rival governments and various militias vying for power.  Obama's regime change marked the start of an ongoing era of chaos, with some of the greatest resulting evils inflicted on black Africans.  Those evils began during the war, as racism and Gaddafi's use of sub-Saharan black mercenaries combined to spark widespread atrocities perpetrated against blacks who were seen as fair game for various atrocities including beatings, rapes and lynchings.

The Jeffrey Sachs-Tucker Carlson interview: the most important interview ever?  [Scroll down]  They did exactly the same thing in Libya.  And you look at Libya, they decided to take out Gaddafi.  Why?  No one really knows.  No one knows because some people say Sarkozy knew that Gaddafi had contributed to Sarkozy's campaign, that it was personal vendetta.  There are a hundred theories.  The fact that there are a hundred theories shows that the whole thing was [BS], to use a technical, diplomatic term.  You cannot even know right now why.  What you know is that they misused a UN Security Council resolution to protect the people of Benghazi, to launch a months-long NATO aerial bombardment of Libya until they brought down the government, unleashed war in Africa for the next 13 years, until today, which is still roiling all of the countries of the region.  They do these things because they can, because it doesn't count.  Maybe another theory which is even maybe true.  What difference?  It's money, it's a business.  We're running a business, we're trying weapons, we're doing this.  Maybe it's all a success from somebody's point of view that you have all these wars going with this big military machine.  I don't know.

"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

— Senator Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007    
in an interview interview with the Boston Globe    
Sources:  [1] [2]    

Barack Obama's proposed mini-war in Syria

The proposed Syrian mini-war is a red herring to divert the attention of the press from Mr. Obama's numerous other scandals.  Mr. Obama wants to start another war so he can be immune from criticism — "while the nation is at war," who would dare to bicker with The Commander In Chief about such trivial matters as Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Benghazi, unemployment, Obamacare exploding on the launch pad, impeachment, gun control, or a Photoshopped birth certificate?

Don't It Always Seem to Go, That You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone.  Compare and contrast the leadership styles of George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama.

Reductio ad Obama.  Obama loves to speak in the first-person singular; he seems oblivious to the obnoxiousness of his habitual references (including one in today's press conference) to "my military."  But suddenly it's a matter of whether we mean what we say.

Lingering doubts over Syria gas attack evidence.  The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the American public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence — no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications — connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.

The Most Embarrassing President of My Lifetime.  Obama is a symbol of much of today's generation, which accepts no responsibility for anything.  Therefore, when something goes wrong among his cockamamie plans, it must be someone else's fault.  Usually, of course, it would be George Bush's fault, but even Obama couldn't bring himself to tell that one again, not in this case.  No, this time it's the whole world's fault.  And Congress.  And America.  It's American credibility that will suffer, he told the world, not his.  Unbelievable.

If It Wasn't Syria, It Would Have Been Something Else.  It is very possible that the president will not obtain a join authorization to bomb Syria; if he chooses to go ahead and attack anyway, Obama will incite a constitutional crisis — the first time in history that a president has decided to go to war against the declared wishes of Congress.  The public and the courts will adjudicate the legality of that act, and it would be contentious.  So the corner that Obama has painted himself into is now inescapable.

The "Assad v. al-Qaeda" narrative may not be what it appears.  There are very good arguments against intervention in Syria, even if I disagree with the conclusions reached from those arguments.  I haven't denigrated those who disagree, although I can't say the same is true in reverse.  Unfortunately, regardless of how you come out on the issue, many people are buying into a media narrative which seeks to minimize the brutality of the Assad regime and the threat it poses, and to create a false choice of "Assad v. al-Qaeda."

Why can't the community organizer organize a community?  As you may recall, much of Senator Obama's message in 2008 was about international coalitions.  He mocked President Bush for "going at it alone."  I guess that 40-something countries in Iraq was not a big enough coalition.  Or, having UK, Canadian and other NATO soldiers take bullets in Afghanistan was not enough either.  Today, President Obama stands alone in the world.  He can't even get the UK in Syria.  He has found some "moral support" but no one is offering airplanes or missiles.

Dear Obama, It's Time to Return Your Nobel Peace Prize. Here's Why.  The U.S. should not attack another country because the president was careless with his words and now wants to protect his personal credibility.  But we don't even need to look at Syria to conclude that the decent thing would be for Obama to return the prize that he never deserved in the first place.

Obama's Grassroots Army 'Missing in Action' on Syria.  Organizing for Action, Obama's famed campaign apparatus turned independent advocacy group with millions of members, has been conspicuously silent in the debate over Syria.  The group's aggressive social media machine, which in the past has used info-graphics, web videos and online petition drives to educate its supporters and rally the ranks, is nowhere to be found.

Gambling With the Presidency.  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a foreign policy fiasco.  All along, it's been clear that President Obama has nothing but bad options in Syria's civil war.  Now, though, he's found a way to put Congress in a similarly unfortunate position.

Benghazi haunting Obama effort to win support for Syria strike.  The first anniversary of the Benghazi, Libya terror attack is making it more difficult for President Obama to win support for a military strike against Syria.  Tea Party lawmakers say the Obama administration lacks credibility on Syria because of the Benghazi attack.

Operation Cockamamie: The Damascus Follies.  The will and the competence of the administration are now major international question marks.  U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power's naïvité is startling.  Apparently she believed that the Iranians and Russians would join with us, the former because they once were victims of gas attacks.  Obviously no one in the administration considered this public announcement of stupidity remarkable enough to distance the administration from it.

Barack Obama's delusions of grandeur: compares Syria intervention to fighting World War Two.  A key part of President Obama's press conference in St. Petersburg last Friday went largely under the radar in the US media — his bizarre analogy between the crisis in Syria, and the London Blitz.  Obama attempted to draw a comparison between America's hesitancy to enter World War Two in 1940 and 1941, to widespread scepticism over a military intervention in Syria over 70 years later.

Obama returns from G20 for a round of Syria strike phone pitches — and golf.  Between phone calls urging lawmakers to authorize a military attack against Syria, President Obama went golfing Saturday.  Mr. Obama played a round of golf with three White House aides at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland.  As his motorcade left the White House grounds near the South Lawn en route to the golf course shortly before 1 p.m., anti-war protesters demonstrated outside the fence on the north side of the White House.

U.S. Amb. to U.N.: Time to Act Outside Legal Framework.  The NPR host asked, "Let me ask a central question for you, because you're representing the U.S. at the United Nations, which has not authorized a strike.  Would an American strike on Syria be legal?"  "If we take military action in this context, it will be a legitimate, necessary, and proportionate response to this large scale and indiscriminate use of chemical weapons by the regime," said Power.

The Editor says...
If you have the time and the inclination to pick through and parse Samantha Power's evasive answers, you are more patient than I.

W.H. Sends Out Rice, Who Misled on Benghazi, to Make Case for Syria.  Susan Rice famously blamed the Benghazi terror attack that took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, on an Internet video.  She further said the terror attack occurred after a spontaneous protest over that anti-Muslim film got out of hand, instead of blaming the al Qaeda backed terrorists responsible for the murders. [...] But today, Rice will be called upon again to make a public case for the White House — this time, she'll be talking about Syria.  Except now Rice is the national security adviser, a promotion she received in the last year.

Obama using al-Qaeda YouTubes to go to war in Syria.  The 13 graphic Syrian videos were shown to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, according to the panel's website, which says they "explicitly claim to show victims of a chemical or poison gas attack." [...] A cursory Canada Free Press (CFP) check indicates that Videos 2 and 7, presented under two different embedded logos, are identified as originating from two separate locations, Eastern Ghouta and Kafir Batna.  Both videos appear to show the same person, a bearded, thin man dressed in a white singlet and white track pants with a dark blue/black stripe down the side.

The Editor says...
Wow — that was the unluckiest man in Syria!  Or else the whole thing is a scam.

Susan Rice: Syria Violated Obama's 'Red Line' in March.  In August, 2012, President Barack Obama declared that the movement or use of chemical weapons in Syria represented a "red line" which would alter America's response to that country's civil war.  In June, 2013, the White House confirmed that the "red line" had been crossed, prompting the president to pledge American support for the Syrian rebels.  On Monday, in the wake of a massive chemical attack on civilians in Syria, National Security Advisor Susan Rice revealed that the White House confirmed the Syrian regime used chemical weapon as early as March.

The Editor says...
Wait a minute — Obama says he didn't set a red line.

Now What?  Everyone can agree that Obama's handling of the crisis has been puerile, and that there now are only the proverbial bad and worse options — the result being not whether the U.S. loses credibility, but only how much and for how long.  So what comes next?

John Kerry under fire for 'unbelievably small' comment.  As President Barack Obama kicks off an all-out push for a strike on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry came under fire on Monday for saying any attack would be "unbelievably small" and suggesting the Syrian ruler still had a week to give up his chemical weapons to avoid a U.S. assault — a remark Kerry's spokeswoman later attempted to clarify.

Obama's Syria Blunder.  With his solitary, last-minute decision to ask Congress for authorization in advance for any military strikes on Syria — taken against the advice of his senior advisors — President Obama has set himself up for the biggest failure of his presidency, one that could haunt the United States for years to come.

Critics see contradictions in Obama administration's Syria claims.  The planned military strikes on Syria would be "targeted, limited" and wouldn't seek to topple the government of President Bashar Assad or even force it to peace talks.  They would also be punishing and "consequential" and would so scare Assad that he would never use chemical weapons again.  U.S. airstrikes would change the momentum on the battlefield of the Syrian civil war.  But the war will grind on, unchanged, perhaps for years.

The president thinks you're stupid.  Americans, he said, should get to speak about this burning issue, "And that's why I've made a second decision" he said, announcing he'd go to Congress for approval.  He's "ready to act!" to face down this immediate threat to America, he declared.  Then, he and Joseph R. Biden headed to the links for a five-hour round of golf.  That's right, they went golfing.  The buck, apparently, stops with Congress, freeing up America's top leaders for a little R&R.

Cornel West: It's "Grounds For Impeachment" If Obama Bombs Syria Without Congressional Approval.  One of President Obama's most prominent critics on the black left said Sunday [9/8/2013] that a strike on Syria in the face of congressional disapproval would be "dictatorial" — and grounds for impeachment.  "It doesn't make sense to commit more war crimes," Cornel West said Sunday on the syndicated radio show Smiley and West, to an approving response from host Tavis Smiley, who has also been consistently critical of Obama.

Why Obama is Floundering.  The sheer ineptitude of President Obama's handling of his Syria red line has made jaws drop all across the political spectrum. [...] With Russian warships assembling off Syria, his apparently off-the-cuff ultimatum is proving to be a historic blunder, not a matter of failing to be a superman.  Barack Obama now finds that the items in his toolbox that got him to the Oval Office no longer work.  Take oratory, for example. Presidential speeches are, as Brit Hume observed on Fox News Sunday, a "depreciating asset" whose effectiveness diminishes with use.

U.S. Spent $1,010,354,195 on Syrian Humanitarian Aid 2012-2013.  USAID, which was created by President John F. Kennedy, is the federal government's primary agency in charge of distributing civilian foreign aid.  Last month, President Barack Obama pledged $195 million in additional humanitarian support to Syrians affected by the country's civil war, tipping U.S. taxpayer spending over the $1 billion threshold.

US: Proven link of Assad to gas attack lacking.  The White House asserted Sunday that a "common-sense test" dictates the Syrian government is responsible for a chemical weapons attack that President Barack Obama says demands a U.S. military response.

Syria chemical weapons attack not ordered by Assad, says German press.  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.

Obama's New World Disorder.  Americans have learned that the world is a more dangerous place under the leadership of our Nobel Peace Prize winner, who never seemed to learn that peace is best achieved though strength.

Obama's Successful Foreign Failure.  It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama's way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust.  Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as "incompetent," "bungling," "feckless," "amateurish" and "in over his head" coming from his political opponents on the right.

Re-election trumps principle every time.
Harman: Congress 'Wants This to Pass, They Just Don't Want to Vote for It'.  Former Democratic representative Jane Harman said she believes both Republicans' and Democrats' concerns about primary challengers are persuading them to not support military intervention in Syria.  "These folks think their reelection, in my view, matters more than perhaps taking a principled stand," said Harman, who is currently president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, on Meet the Press this morning.  "They want this to pass, they just don't want to vote for it."

Obama Got Played by Putin and Assad.  This, apparently, is how diplomacy happens these days:  Someone makes an off-hand remark at a press conference and triggers an international chain reaction that turns an already chaotic and complex situation completely on its head, and gives everyone a sense that, perhaps, this is the light at the end of the indecision tunnel.

Russia Backing Away from Fake Syria Weapons Deal.  John Kerry said it couldn't be done.  Russia is making sure that it won't, even if it could be.

Russia call for Syria to give up chemical arms 'may be a ruse'.  David Cameron last night called for a "cautious" response to a surprise Russian plan for Syria's chemical weapons to be put under international control.  Kremlin chiefs yesterday [9/9/2013] put forward the initiative in a bid to avert a US attack on Syria.

Putin is the one who really deserves that Nobel Peace Prize.  In one of the most deft diplomatic maneuvers of all time, Russia's President Putin has saved the world from near-certain disaster.  He did so without the egoistical but incompetent American president, or his earnest but clueless Secretary of State, even realizing they had been offered a way out of the mess they'd created.

Intelligence Insider Speaks on the Record About False Flags and Government Lies.  Despite a nearly unanimous consensus of the American people against military action in Syria, elements of our government are determined to override the will of the people and push us headlong into war in Syria, which will lead to a much greater conflagration than most are willing to believe or imagine.

Limbaugh Compiles Round-Up of Media Celebrating Obama's 'Genius' Embrace of Kerry's Gaffe.  Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tore into the media on Tuesday and accused them of malpractice in their reporting of how the so-called Russian proposal to impose a diplomatic solution on Syria.  Limbaugh played a montage of clips of members of the media celebrating the "genius" of President Barack Obama for embracing a misstatement by Sec. John Kerry and making it the centerpiece of American policy towards that country's civil war.  "Turns out, this was the plan all along — at least what the media wants us to believe," Limbaugh said of the Russian solution.  "This is journalistic malpractice."

Putin Didn't Save Obama, He Beat Him.  Maybe Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin really did discuss the idea of putting Syrian chemical weapons under international control last week on the sidelines of the G20 conference.  Putin sure doesn't care that Obama's taking credit for the proposal, or that the administration is posturing like a Mob enforcer.  "The only reason why we are seeing this proposal," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, "is because of the U.S. threat of military action."

Climbdown complete — Obama agrees to UN debate on Putin plan.  Just a day ago, Barack Obama planned to lay out his case for taking military action against Syria in a prime-time address this evening.  Instead, he'll have to explain why he's suddenly interested in the United Nations track, which his administration disparaged just last week as "hocus pocus" and "paralyzed."

Kerry now claims credit for Syria weapons proposal.  Secretary of State John Kerry's seemingly casual proposal for the Assad regime to turn over its chemical weapons has within 24 hours become the de facto policy of the Obama administration, and is now being heralded by Kerry as the "ideal way" to defuse the stand-off between the United States and Syria.  But a look at the administration's statements shows that the plan has undergone an incredible evolution.

The United States of weakness.  Red lines that may or may not be real, retaliatory strikes that may or may not be hours from launch, congressional debates that may or may not be necessary for the president to do what he wants — whatever that happens to be this hour.  Barack Obama's unsteady handling of the Syria crisis has been an avert-your-gaze moment in the history of the modern presidency — highlighting his unsettled views and unattractive options in a way that has caused his enemies to cackle and supporters to cringe.

Spin Cycle: Russia Deal Came About Because of Obama's Extraordinary Threats.  White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama will move forward with a Syria strike pitch to the American people tonight despite a delayed Senate vote after Russia announced a plan to secure Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons.  Carney said the administration views the deal brokered by Assad's main arms supplier as "potentially a positive development."

McConnell chides Obama as 'reluctant commander-in-chief' on Syria.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came out against using U.S. military force in Syria Tuesday, criticizing the way President Obama has handled the situation.  "No one should be faulted for being skeptical about this proposal, regardless of what party they're in, or for being dumfounded at the ham-handed manner in which the White House announced it," McConnell said on the Senate floor.

This plan to rid Syria of chemical weapons is a cardboard proposal.  Is President Obama looking for a fig-leaf that would allow him to retreat from his threat of military action?  Or, on the contrary, is he trying to build the case for striking Syria's regime by demonstrating that he went the extra mile, ran down every avenue and exhausted every proposal, however unlikely, to avoid war?

In Syria, Putin's the Player and Obama's the Playee.  President Barack Obama has become a comic figure on the world stage, a laughingstock unable to keep his story straight, while his principal rival seizes the initiative in Syria.  So desperate is Obama for a face-saving retreat from his ultimatum on Syrian chemical weapons that he will concede the really important issues to Russia, Syria and Iran.  And being Obama, he will portray his retreat as a great diplomatic victory, and his media claque will sell the story to the low information voting public.

Russia and Syria double-team Obama in nifty PR peace move.  Monday's [9/9/2013] flurry of international events about President Obama's threat to attack Syria showed a) how amateurishly ad hoc is Obama's attempt to save face over his idle red line threat from a year ago and b) how cleverly adept and swift Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria's Bashar Assad are in manipulating news media in the guerrilla combat for world public opinion.

The Amateur's War.  Syria would be Obama's fourth war, but it might as well be his first war.  The amateur has an impressive war machine that can level entire countries, but not the understanding of how to use it.  Obama has reportedly flipped through 50 war plans for Syria, but he hasn't been able to provide one sensible reason why the attack should happen.  His rationalizations and justifications never stop shifting.  If you don't like one excuse, wait a bit and another one will come along.

Susan Rice returns to CIA talking points.  The [Benghazi] backlash poisoned her relationship with Republicans in Congress and dashed her chances of becoming secretary of state.  President Obama instead named her national security adviser, which didn't require Senate confirmation.  Now there is another crisis.  Obama needs congressional support for a military strike on Syria, because a "no" vote could cripple his presidency and damage American credibility.  So what do the big brains in the White House do?  They put Susan Rice in front of TV cameras to read CIA talking points.

Russia's plan to disarm Syria is a massive red herring.  Having set his arbitrary red lines for military intervention in Syria's civil war — namely the use of banned weapons by the Assad regime — the American president now finds himself in a desperate scramble to avoid following through on his commitment.  As a result, no one at the White House is prepared to give Moscow's offer the sober assessment it deserves and expose it as an utterly futile gesture.

Syria, chemical weapons, and the worst day in Western diplomatic history.  Monday 9 September, 2013, was the worst day for US and wider Western diplomacy since records began. [...] There is no precedent for attempting anything like this in a country wracked by civil war.  It just can't happen.  No Syrian chemical weapons will be destroyed or "handed over" quickly.

Carney Does Not Think Kerry Misspoke When He Called Potential Attack on Syria 'Unbelievably Small'.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended Secretary of State John Kerry's remarks in which he characterized a potential U.S. attack on Syria as "unbelievably small" Monday in the White House press conference.  Carney said Kerry's use of the "unbelievably small" measurement was actually in comparison to America's military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Syria: Barack Obama hands the world to Vladimir Putin.  Thanks to an ironic aside from John Kerry (obviously uttered with little thought that it could be taken seriously) to the effect that in the wildly unlikely event that Assad should hand over all his chemical weapons Syria could escape American attack, the US president has jumped gleefully off the hook.  The congressional deliberations over military action can now be put on an even more leisurely schedule than they would have been while we all wait and see if that great world statesman, Mr Putin, can bring peace to the region.

Kerry: Turn Over Your Chemical Weapons Now or Face ... "Unbelievably Small" Consequences.  Secretary of State John Kerry's case for a U.S. strike in Syria seems to rest on two assumptions.  One, that it is a crucial test for U.S. national security and the values of the civilized world comparable to the rise of Nazi Germany.  Two, that it's not really a big deal.

Going to War with the Blind General of Benghazi (An Apology).  Any administration that could have the temerity to send the nauseating serial Benghazi prevaricator Susan Rice, on the anniversary of that event yet, to explain to Congress why our representatives should approve a strike on Syria not only should NOT get the aforesaid approval, they should be forbidden approval for anything more significant than the choice of wallpaper in the White House rest rooms — and even that I'm not so sure.

Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?  Having insisted for the past two weeks that military strikes are the only appropriate response to the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons against its own people, the Obama administration muddled its message today by entertaining the possibility of a non-military solution to the crisis.

Obama's Farce.  Obama, as senator and presidential candidate, made the serial argument that U.S. military interventions, barring an "imminent threat" to our national security, are both illegal and immoral unless they have the triad of U.S. congressional support, U.N. approval, and American public support.  In the present circumstances, to make the argument for attacking Syria he must assume that congressional authorization is an eleventh-hour afterthought and not necessarily binding, that the U.N. is mostly hocus-pocus and not worth the bother, and that overwhelming public opposition does not matter.

Obama's war with no name.  The passive is never the voice of a leader. What plain folk asked to go to war crave is plain speech delivered with passion, a leader who says what he means, means what he says, and says on Tuesday what he said on Monday.  That's not the style in Washington.  Terrorism becomes "overseas contingency operations," murder is "workplace violence" and "war" is merely an "action."

Kerry's killer gaffes.  Now that John Kerry is the secretary of state, his gaffes can launch major diplomatic initiatives.  A reporter in London asked what Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could do to avoid war.  Kerry responded:  "He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week — turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting.  But he isn't about to do it, and it can't be done."  The State Department quickly noted that the secretary was merely making a rhetorical point.  But the Russians immediately embraced the Kerry flourish as a serious proposal.  It was "welcomed" by Damascus and spoken of warmly by the UN secretary-general and the British and French governments.

Another Fine Mess.  Putin looks to be inside the Administration's OODA loop.  Once he saw Obama commit his prestige to defending a self-inflicted Red Line, he painted a decoy target and then promptly erased it after first watching the President marshal his entire stock of political capital to engage it.  And now there's another target all glittering in the radar return:  the offer to withdraw the chemical weapons.

The Bed Barack Obama and John Kerry Made.  So much for John Kerry's "global test," circa 2004.  So much for Barack Obama slamming the Bush administration for dismissing "European reservations about the wisdom and necessity of the Iraq war," circa 2007.  So much for belittling foreign leaders who side with the administration as "poodles."  So much for the U.N. stamp of legitimacy.  So much for the "lie/die" rhyme popular with Democrats when they were accusing George W. Bush of fiddling with the WMD intelligence.

Why I'll vote no on Syria strike.  The president insists on using a military option, which I oppose for three reasons:  First, Assad's actions, however deplorable, are not a direct threat to U.S. national security.  Many bad actors on the world stage have, tragically, oppressed and killed their citizens, even using chemical weapons to do so.  Unilaterally avenging humanitarian disaster, however, is well outside the traditional scope of U.S. military action.  Second, just because Assad is a murderous thug does not mean that the rebels opposing him are necessarily better. [...] Third, the potential for escalation is immense.

Obama is a laughing stock.  Remember that dumb cowboy George W. Bush, who alienated all our allies and dragged us into wars of choice in the Mideast?  And remember that goofball Mitt Romney, whom Joe Biden a year ago accused of wanting to go to war in Syria?  Both of them must be having a big laugh over the way things are going for Obama now.

Syria Can Shoot Back, Mr. President.  As a Chinese warship joins Russian ships in the Mediterranean, we should remember a cruise missile attack on an Israeli warship.  President Obama should understand that Syria and Hezbollah have missiles, too.

Obama's Proposed Attack On Syria Shrinks And Shrinks.  Secretary of State John Kerry, the face President Obama obviously wants defending an increasingly indefensible non-strategy, vowed Monday, "We're not going to war.  We will not have people at risk in that way."  We will have "a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort," an "unbelievably small, limited kind of effort."  We're talking small here, folks.  As in "don't lose any sleep over it, Bashar."

Obama's Syria Debacle Inflicts Historic Damage on America.  Max Boot does an excellent job explaining why the new Russian proposal on removing chemical weapons from Syria is almost certainly a mirage.  Not surprisingly, however, President Obama is eager to embrace it.  After all, doing so will avoid Congress rejecting his request to use military strikes against Syria — and the de facto collapse of his presidency.  But this will come at quite a high cost.  Russia is now establishing itself as the preeminent power in the region, having displaced the United States.

Barack Obama's Sad Sausage-Making Foreign Policy.  Is this an Abbott and Costello comedy routine?  A Peter Sellers movie about an inept political leader?  Presidents are elected to make tough decisions, particularly when it comes to matters of foreign policy.  President Barack Obama seems to be looking for a way not to be "the Decider."  If Syria's act was as heinous as the president and the secretary of state said it was, then Obama should have acted one way.  If it wasn't so heinous, he should have acted another way (and not have drawn a red line initially).  How about picking one and staying consistent?

President Obama Finds the Limits of His Powers of Persuasion.  In a debate that's brought strange bedfellows, this is hard to top: President Obama is now hoping that Vladimir Putin saves him from his own Congress.  The president tonight offered virtually no new arguments and little fresh urgency in his push to confront Syria over chemical weapons.  The only short-term option is the one supplied by the Russians, in a dizzying series of events that brought quick recalculations on the part of the White House.

There's Almost No Chance Russia's Plan for Syria's Chemical Weapons Will Work.  Russia's proposal for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to place his chemical weapons under international supervision and then destroy them is quickly gaining steam.  Assad's government accepted the plan this morning.  A few hours later, President Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande announced that they'd seriously explore the proposal.  It already has the backing of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a growing number of influential lawmakers from both parties.  There's just one problem:  the plan would be nearly impossible to actually carry out.

Obama Rescues Assad.  What could be worse for America's standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President's proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD?  Here's one idea:  A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along.  That's where President Obama now finds himself on Syria [...]

Syria Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Barack Obama.  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.  As he addressed a global audience Tuesday night, liberal elites blindly accepted White House fiction that Russian intervention this week was somehow part of Obama's master plan.

Obama's Diplomatic Acrobatics.  The Obama administration's diplomatic acrobatics over Syria of the past three weeks prove that the president and his team are in way over their heads, amateurs in the deadly game of war and peace.  (One wonders if Valerie Jarrett is making the key decisions in this instance, as in so many others.)  Lurching from self-imposed trap (the "red line" statement) to self-inflicted crisis (the need for congressional approval), the administration erodes the credibility of the U.S. government and increases the dangers facing Americans.

Concerns as US waits for Russia to call next move in Syria crisis.  President Obama and members of Congress suddenly find themselves waiting on the gadfly of the world stage to call their next move in America's foreign policy — Vladimir Putin, who until now was derided as the obstacle to an international solution on the Syria crisis.  The head-spinning turn of events has many lawmakers worried, openly voicing concern that the Russians are in control, and that they and the Assad regime are not the most trustworthy deal makers.

Israeli media: Obama's the loser.  The Arab media has been butchering President Barack Obama's image in the Middle East, portraying him as weak, lacking leadership, and scheming for American domination.  But he's not faring much better in the United States' closest ally in the region — Israel.  A review of Israeli media by POLITICO shows a few clear story lines:  Vladimir Putin has outplayed the president; Iran is strengthened; and Obama is a weak leader that Israel may no longer be able to count on to help stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Bolton calls Russian deal on Syria 'Alice in Wonderland' proposal.  Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton on Tuesday [9/10/2013] called a Russian-brokered offer for Syria to turn over its chemical weapons an "Alice in Wonderland" proposal.

Obama calls for hold on his Syria attack that Americans didn't want anyway.  Obama tried to make the best of it in his speech, which was a good one as a start educating Americans.  But it was at least six months tardy to convince anyone now.  And prime-time presidential addresses are supposed to be important.  This one ended up being an announcement that Obama was asking Congress to stop doing what he had just asked it to do, even though he maintains he didn't really need to, but he's still really serious because gas attacks are awful.

Is the White House lying about how the Russian Syria proposal originated?  It is entirely possible that Kerry did talk about eliminating Assad's chemical weapons with Lavrov and the idea was raised in Obama-Putin conversations.  But it is painfully obvious from the initial reaction at the State Department and the White House that it was never — never — considered a serious proposal.  It's the kind of thing diplomats talk about in the abstract — like nuclear disarmament or world peace.  But Putin leapt upon Kerry's comment and put some meat on a throwaway proposal.  The speed with which the Syrians got on board makes you think that Putin and Assad had gamed this scenario out in advance and was hoping Kerry would step into the trap.

The Editor says...
That's impossible to believe!  Barack H. Obama a/k/a Barry Soetoro, has never lied about anything, with the exception of all this stuff.

French draft UN resolution gives Syria a 15-day deadline.  France has proposed a draft United Nations Resolution giving Syria's regime 15 days to submit a "complete and definitive" declaration of its chemical arsenal.  The draft then "demands" the unconditional destruction of these weapons "under international supervision".

U.S. can't prove Bashar Assad approved chemical attacks in Syria.  U.S. intelligence has yet to uncover evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad directly ordered the chemical attacks last month on civilians in a suburb of Damascus, though the consensus inside U.S. agencies and Congress is that members of Mr. Assad's inner circle likely gave the command, officials tell The Washington Times.

McCain says Obama is victim of Putin's 'game of rope-a-dope' on Syria.  [Scroll down]  Meanwhile, aides to members of Congress told MailOnline today that the chief fear swirling around Capitol Hill is that in the hands of Putin, an apparent deal to separate Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from his chemical weapons could be a giant stalling tactic.  A staffer to a senior member of that committee said Wednesday afternoon that by relegating U.S. military muscle to backup-plan status, the president 'all but guaranteed that Putin will think he has a really long leash.'

Obama Doctrine: He could even attack nations over climate change.  The emerging Obama Doctrine justifies attacking nations that violate "international norms," as judged solely by the president.  Based on statements by President Obama and key players, he could even launch attacks against those he blames for global climate change.  Polluters and deniers beware:  You may have to face our Marines.  In outlining his new doctrine, Obama created a policy so loose that it fits his climate change pronouncements just as easily as it fits the Syria situation.

Is Putin, a Big Assad Supplier, Seriously Going to Disarm Him?  If a Russian proposal to pressure Bashar al-Assad into declaring and relinquishing his chemical weapons stockpile moves forward, the United States will be in the strange position of relying on one of Syria's chief weapons suppliers to disarm a regime the president has accused of gassing its own people.

Dazed and Confused.  Give President Obama credit: He has done such a good job of acting unpredictably in the lead-up to his proposed military strikes on Syria that no one knows what he will do next.  He has successfully confused ally and enemy alike.

Obama's waffling on Syria handed Russia the driver's seat.  Sensing an opportunity with a weak and vacillating occupant in the White House, Putin jumped on the opening provided by Secretary of State John Kerry's seemingly off-hand suggestion that Russia take custody of Syria's chemical weapons.  Never mind that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had never previously admitted even having such weapons.  And never mind that Putin had previously claimed to have no sway with Assad.  International diplomacy never lets a little thing like the record get in the way.

Syrial Losers.  Americans unsure what to think about President Obama's plans for Syria should remember that all military action undertaken by Democrats for the last half-century has led to utter disaster.

Obama's missteps on Syria lead to retreat.  Sometimes a president does not have a communications problem.  Sometimes a president has a reality problem.  President Obama's speech to the nation on Syria was premised on the denial of reality.

U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels.  The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures.  The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear  — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria's civil war.

The Laurel and Hardy Presidency.  In the interplay between Barack Obama and John Kerry, it's not obvious which one is Laurel and which one is Hardy.  But diplomatic slapstick is not funny.

Time for Kerry To Resign.  At this point the best thing that could happen in the Syria crisis would be for Secretary of State Kerry to resign.  He's one of the logical persons to take the fall for this fiasco, given that we don't live under a parliamentary system and the constitutional concept in respect of the president, any president, is for the decision to be made by voters once in four years.  It was Mr. Kerry who made the blunder that has put the administration on track for a classic appeasement.

Is the Russian plan to disarm Assad really about Syria or diplomatic face-saving?  In an interview with Russian TV due to be shown tonight [9/2/2013], President Bashar al-Assad will say:  "Syria is transferring its chemical weapons to international control."  This will happen solely "because of Russia", he adds, and the "threats of the United States had no influence on the decision".  What a difference three days can make.  It was barely 72 hours ago, remember, that Assad refused to tell Charlie Rose of CBS whether Syria possessed chemical weapons at all.

Assad tells Obama to stop arming rebels, or no deal.  President Obama must promise not to arm rebel forces or Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will not hand over his chemical weapons, the embattled leader told a Russian state media outlet today [9/2/2013] while demanding that Israel also surrender its nuclear arsenal.

Putin Makes Obama Pay a High Price for Syria Escape.  [John] Kerry rose to power because of his leading role in the American antiwar movement of the 1970s.  His testimony accusing, sometimes wrongly, American soldiers of atrocities in Vietnam launched a political career that took him to the Senate, the Democratic nomination for the presidency and, now, to the top post in President Obama's cabinet.

Thanks to Obama's useless ineptitude, Putin has basically won.  Vladimir Putin has taken to trolling the United States — and you have to admire his guts.  On 9-11, a sacred day in the US, the New York Times released an op ed written by the Russian leader in which he not only told Americans than the Obama administration is wrong on Syria but that their country is not quite as exceptional as they think.

Military Action in Syria is Unjust.  One of the often forgotten precepts of the Christian Just War Theory is that "Before war is entered upon there must be a reasonable belief that such an action will be successful."  This is to guard against a futile waste of life and destruction — even if the cause for action may be just.  Some will maintain that President Obama's request for military strike on Syria does not constitute a war.  Quite simply, however, barring legal technicalities any attack on a sovereign nation is a de facto act of war.

Syria situation further strains Obama's relationship with the antiwar movement.  Antiwar activist Nathan Ryan looked to candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign to channel his opposition to the Iraq war.  But now, with Obama making a muscular case for military strikes on Syria, he is looking elsewhere.

Test Russia's Intentions.  Initially voiced as an off-the-cuff remark by Kerry — and immediately dismissed by him as unachievable — the proposal has become the subject of world attention.  The Obama administration, while cautiously describing the Geneva talks as exploratory, must at some level share the widely held suspicion that the Putin initiative may be only a ruse or distraction intended to forestall a U.S. strike and protect the Assad regime, Moscow's surest ally in the region.

Guess Where Those Chemical Weapons Came From, Mr. President.  [President Obama] doesn't even seem to know where those chemical weapons in Syria came from in the first place.  Ironically, at least some of them came from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  They were part of those weapons of mass destruction we never found.

Why Obama's PR campaign to attack Syria won't work.  If President Obama believes he can turn around public opinion on U.S. intervention in Syria with a single speech, or even a few days of intensive public relations campaigning, he is badly mistaken.  Without some huge, earth-shattering event that changes things overnight — a Sept. 11 or a Pearl Harbor — changing public opinion is a slow process.  To do it, a leader must make a case over and over and over and over — something Obama has notably failed to do with Syria.  So his speech Tuesday night won't change much.

The fruits of epic incompetence.  Putin doesn't care one way or the other about chemical weapons.  Nor about dead Syrian children.  Nor about international norms, parchment treaties and the other niceties of the liberal imagination.  He cares about power and he cares about keeping Bashar al-Assad in power.  Assad is the key link in the anti-Western Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Damascus and Beirut to the Mediterranean — on which sits Tartus, Russia's only military base outside the former Soviet Union.

Obama's Wing-It Diplomacy Undermines U.S. Credibility.  Here's how the Obama folks have been starting to spin Syria.  The president made a credible threat to use military force in Syria.  At the same time, he worked behind the scenes to get Russia's Vladimir Putin to push Bashar Assad to give up chemical weapons.  These two seemingly discordant initiatives, brilliantly coordinated, combined to produce a process to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons without even a shot being fired across the bow.  Of course, every bit of this is false.  Only the most credulous Obama fans are fooled.

Obama Lets Putin Humiliate America, In Word And Deed.  A murderous enemy of democratic freedom such as Vladimir Putin gets a New York Times platform to lecture Americans.  Why not?  He just proved he has more international clout than our own president.  Even Obama admirer Joe Klein admits in Time magazine that the president's Syria debacle "weakened the nation's standing in the world" in "one of the more stunning and inexplicable displays of presidential incompetence that I've ever witnessed."

Hamlet should be on stage, not in the Oval Office.  President Obama can agonize and debate all likes — behind closed doors.  We don't need to and should not see a president think out loud and champion irresoluteness, as we saw this Tuesday night and over the last few weeks.  We don't elect presidents to be the "equivocator" or the "vacillator."  The left passes indecision off as thoughtfulness, trying to make a fatal flaw into a virtue.

Obama's Syria Debacle.  [Scroll down]  The White House's inaction and continued indecisiveness has further emboldened Assad to test American resolve by using chemical weapons at least eight times and blatantly crossing President Obama's so-called "red line" with impunity.  Reliable sources suggest that the president's national security team knew with certainty about the earlier use of chemical weapons but chose to continue to "investigate" to play for time, which led to more, larger scale chemical attacks.

White House signals concession on Syria U.N. resolution.  Journalists emerging from a closed-door briefing at the White House Friday afternoon [9/13/2013] were informed that President Barack Obama won't insist that a U.N. resolution governing Syria's surrender of chemical weapons include a threat of military force if President Bashar Assad doesn't follow through.

Obama concedes to Russia; will remove military trigger on Syria.  President Obama is prepared to bow to Russian demands that he give up a military trigger in the pending UN resolution on Syria, administration officials told reporters on Friday.  Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the United States must take the threat of force off the table if Syria is to turn over its chemical weapons arsenal to the international community.

Syria chemical weapons proposal is Putin's masterstroke.  Russian credibility is not in question — it is already assured.  Moscow has ensured the safety of its ally and his war effort.  So now it's back to the war.

Putin the Peacemaker vs. Obama the Warmonger.  President Obama has now sabotaged four decades of stability in the Middle East. [...] In the strangest twist of history, it is Obama the radical leftist who is now acting as the destabilizing warmonger in the Middle East, while Vladimir Putin may be emerging as a stabilizing peacemaker.  Nobody can figure out whether Obama is the most hapless bumbler in history, or whether there is some sinister purpose behind it all.  It could be both.

Our Never Ending Obama Nightmare.  In Syria, the actions of the President and his team have bordered on total incompetence.  Almost every wrong step has been made.  Today, we are left with a situation where the U.S. has limited influence, while the power of our adversary Russia has increased tremendously.  More and more Americans are realizing that this President is not qualified to lead the nation. [...] It is a sad day in this country when the former leader of the KGB is more persuasive than our own President.

US, Russia reach deal on Syria chemical weapons.  The Obama administration and Russia reached a deal Saturday [9/14/2013] to compel Syria to account for and eventually destroy its chemical weapons arsenal, leaving open the possibility that the UN could authorize sanctions or military action for future violations.

Syrian minister declares 'victory'; thanks Russia.  Why didn't he thank Obama too?  Without our Barry, there would have been no clown opponent to steamroll off the world stage.

Samantha, Syria and the use of power.  Did you ever wonder why we have been teetering on the brink of war with Syria when virtually no one in America wants to go to war?  The answer can be summed up in two words:  Samantha Power.  Power is the new American ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime foreign-policy adviser to President Barack Obama.  She is also a dangerously radical proponent of military intervention in humanitarian crises around the globe.

"Imbeciles".  The idea is that the Syrian will destroy his chemical weapons, which the Kremlin helped him to acquire, and accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention.  In return — according to the Washington Post — the Obama administration may have agreed not only to lay off a military attack but to forbear from bringing Mr. Al-Assad before the World Court.  This is a time to review what happened in 1938 at Munich.

Syria: nearly half rebel fighters are jihadists or hardline Islamists, says IHS Jane's report.  Nearly half the rebel fighters in Syria are now aligned to jihadist or hardline Islamist groups according to a new analysis of factions in the country's civil war.  Opposition forces battling Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria now number around 100,000 fighters, but after more than two years of fighting they are fragmented into as many as 1,000 bands.

The Impostor President Gets Caught.  When Putin shot Obama's balloon down over Syria no one should have been surprised.  As America first learned at Benghazi, you can fake your way through college, fake your way through the Senate, even fake your way through the presidency, but you can't fake your way through a civil war in the Middle East.

The Elites Stumble on Syria.  [Scroll down]  I suppose you have to have lived in Washington a long time for this fairy tale to make sense.  And frankly, some elected officials have lived in Washington for far too long.  We must remember that in addition to Senator Graham, John McCain — who like Graham was elected to be the loyal opposition — rushed to the Oval Office weeks ago in support of Obama's Syria policy.  In fact, after meeting with President Obama, McCain and Graham emerged confident — even cocky — that they had the entire Syria scenario figured out.

Into the Syrian Bazaar.  Politicians on the right and left are praising Saturday's U.S.-Russia "framework" to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons as a step away from American intervention.  That is true only in the looking-glass world in which politicians are desperate to avoid voting on a military strike.  The reality is that the accord takes President Obama and the U.S. ever deeper into the Syrian diplomatic bazaar, with the President hostage to Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin as the friendly local tour guides.

Barack Obama, the 98-pound weakling.  The moral imperative is clear, he argued.  We cannot let dictators get away with this.  On the other hand, the United States can't be expected to solve all the world's problems, either.  Therefore, the way ahead is to outsource U.S. foreign policy on Syria to ... Vladimir Putin!  So much for the credibility of the world's only superpower.  Mr. Obama's staff have been tweeting that this delaying tactic is an incredible display of smart diplomacy.  But to most of us, it just makes him look gullible.

The Charade Can Go On — and On and On.  So far in the Syrian charade, Bashar Assad has won de facto permission to be a legitimate ruler negotiating with superpowers, while promising to kill thousands more by blowing them up, shelling them, and shooting them without "obscene" chemical weapons.  Vladimir Putin controls the tempo of the crisis.

Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition.  President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to "vetted" opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

WSJ Details 'Head-Spinning Reversal on Chemical Weapons' in Obama White House.  In a 66-paragraph masterpiece, Journal reporters Adam Entous, Janet Hook, and Carol Lee gave a behind-the-scenes look of how, "Through mixed messages, miscalculations, and an 11th-hour break, the U.S. stumbled into an international crisis and then stumbled out of it." [...] It really is a great exploration of the Keystone Kops nature of the Obama team's bungling of Syrian foreign policy.

Obama's 'unbelievably small' presidency.  We're conducting foreign policy by faux pas.  This entire episode has been driven not by deliberate strategy but by slips of the tongue.  Obama's declaration of a "red line" on chemical weapons was a slip of the tongue.  So was Secretary of State John Kerry's offer to have Syria give up its chemical weapons.  There is no plan, no coherence to anything this administration is doing on Syria.  More embarrassing still, Obama is actually claiming that the diplomatic "breakthrough" is the result of his administration's show of strength.

Obama's Box Canyon.  The Syrian fiasco arose from two mutually contradictory desires.  Barack Obama sincerely wanted Bashar Assad to stop killing his own people.  Barack Obama also really was not willing to use force to ensure that Assad would stop killing his own people.  At Harvard, those desires would not be antithetical.  Elsewhere they are.

Syria expert admits she lied about her qualifications.  A expert on Syria whose work was quoted by senior politicians as they debated military action has finally admitted she that she lied over her degree and said sorry.  A week after she was sacked from her job as an analyst with the Institute of War, Elizabeth O'Bagy has said that not only did she not earn a doctorate from Georgetown University, but she never even attended the PhD program there.

Embattled Syria 'Expert' Elizabeth O'Bagy Says She Made 'Many Mistakes'.  Elizabeth O'Bagy, the Syria researcher at the center of a week-long controversy surrounding her academic credentials and her work with the Syrian opposition, admitted for the first time to The Daily Beast she was never enrolled in a Ph.D. program despite representations she made to the press and multiple organizations for whom she worked.

The Editor says...
Wow, that woman's career is toast!  After she admitted that her credentials were fraudulent, where could she possibly find a job as a consultant?  Oh, wait... Here's the answer:

McCain Hires Scandal-Plagued Syria Analyst, Former Rebel Lobbyist.  Senator John McCain has hired Elizabeth O'Bagy, a former analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who's been accused of fabricating qualifications and being in the employ of Syrian rebel advocates, as a legislative assistant, Foreign Policy reports.

Watch these clueless students fail to defend Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.  Students at the University of Southern California believe President Obama still deserves his Nobel Peace Prize, despite his stated preference for war with Syria.  How did they defend this view?  They couldn't.  In a video interview with Katherine Timpf of Campus Reform, USC students expressed confidence that Obama was still worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize he won just a few months after taking office in 2009.

Obama Was Against Syrian Rebels Before He Was For Them.  Despite reports that half the Syrian "rebels" are al-Qaida terrorists and other jihadists, the White House insists they're mostly freedom fighters worthy of aid.  That's not what the commander in chief said last year.

Report: Obama Consulted NY Times Editors, Columnists On Syria Strategy.  What influenced President Obama's mercurial decision on military intervention in Syria?  According to Michael Calderone, it may have been the editors and op-ed writers at the New York Times.

Pelosi: Let's face it, Republicans hate Obama because he's eloquent and "nonpartisan".  [Scroll down]  And while normally I'd cut her slack on grounds that she's duty bound as a party leader to spout flattering nonsense about a Democratic president, I can't believe she'd praise his strategic acumen after three solid weeks of White House idiocy on Syria.  He had no strategy in first announcing the "red line"; he had no strategy on what to do if it was crossed; he had no strategy to win over reluctant members of Congress from both parties to support an attack; and he had no strategy to extricate himself from the whole mess until Putin laid one on his plate.