Friday, June 14, 2013

And So It Begins

It looks like we're getting into another Libya, folks...only Syria ain't Libya.  We're about to find that out the hard way.  The Obama administration has decided that the Asaad regime has used chemical weapons, and it's time for them to go.  Brian Jones at Business Insider:

For the last two years, the bloody conflict in Syria has careened toward a tipping point.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we may be there.

The timing of this is a little bit crazy:
  • A deputy national security advisor has announced that the White House believes the Bashar al-Assad regime used chemical weapons against the rebels in Syria.
  • The Pentagon has proposed a plan that would arm and train the rebels, as well as instill a limited no-fly zone over Syria.
  • And 4,500 U.S. forces are a stone throw away, in Jordan, conducting a training exercise with Jordanian forces.
President Obama said last year that if Syrian president Bashar al Assad used chemical weapons, it would be a “red line” that would precipitate direct U.S. intervention in the conflict.  

“That would change my calculus,” Obama said. “That would change my equation.”

Presumably the situation in Syria now meets the criteria for U.S. military intervention. 

And so we may be about to commit a horrific mistake.   Even I have to believe that given all the GOP-created scandals, the Obama administration is trying to change the subject in a massive way.  $50 million a day for a no-fly zone over Syria, Jordan being our base of operations, and Russia, Iran and Israel as wild cards.


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