With friends like that ...



-Laelth

in Syria as planned, we could still be there, with ships and planes, bogged down in an escalating proxy war. Maybe Putin even wanted that. Obama avoided that trap--THANK GOD. Russia has interests in Syria--we don't. None.

Russia has a near-monopoly on natural gas sales to Western Europe. The reason our European allies wanted us to invade Syria was so that we could create a pipeline from the oil fields of Northern Iraq to the Mediterranean and, thereby, ease the pressure on Europe to buy Russian natural gas. Russia's puppet, Assad, wouldn't allow the pipeline. That would hurt his ally, Russia. Thus, under pressure from the U.K. and France, we started saber-rattling, and we nearly did invade Syria. Cameron, in the U.K., put the issue before Parliament, but he got his rump handed to him. He then backed off and left Obama holding the bag. The President then backed off as well.

There can be no doubt that we have serious concerns in Syria, as well as in the Ukraine. All this hub-bub is about Russia's natural gas monopoly. Our allies in Europe don't like it. They want it to end. How to end it is the question before us.

-Laelth

to end the Assad regime, and he also enraged Saudi Arabia and the neocon crowd by dragging his feet on arming the rebels for YEARS. Hillary, Panetta, and Petraeus practically BEGGED him to get involved in Syria, and someone off the record admitted he was just throwing token effort at it--it's fairly certain that we could have toppled Assad early on, so why didn't we? That chem weapons attack would have been his beautiful excuse if he really had such a plan as you describe, he didn't even have to get Congress involved--and, anyway, if what you say was totally true, the Republicans/neocons in Congress wouldn't have fought him, they would have PUSHED him into bombing.

As it turns out, the Pentagon was reluctant both to arm the rebels (see Gen. Dempsey's letter to Congress in August, leaked publicly) and strike Syria. So they weren't exactly on board with the program either. I'm not saying you're wrong about a proposed gas line and how it would help Europe, but I guarantee Obama would not risk war or fight war for it. I suspect the chem weapons attack might have been a trap laid by any number of parties to draw us in to a low-level conflict with no end point and a fuzzy strategic payoff (regardless of PNAC plans).

I agree that the U.K., and France, and Hillary, and many others did want us to invade Syria. It looked like the President was going to cave to that pressure, and the U.S. military was preparing to do so ... until Cameron got his rump handed to him in the U.K. Parliament and bailed on the idea, as I said, leaving Obama holding the bag.

I think it's highly reckless to "guarantee" anything in politics, btw. It's certainly unwise to "guarantee" anything about President Obama (who holds his cards very close to his chest). If you are a true insider, however, it's a pleasure to meet you, and I'd like to know exactly who you are.

My response was to a silly claim that we have no interests in Syria. I think I showed that we, and our allies, do, in fact, have serious interests in Syria.

-Laelth

Lovely.

himself?

I hope Obama has learned what most of us have always known, you cannot TRUST Republicans. He should have shut them out after the people THREW THEM OUT.

Now we have to do it again along with the ones posing as Dems in our own party.

Then I'd like to be weak.

Chris Coons has been a disappointment on many issues. We had nothing to do with what's going on in the Ukraine an there is nothing President Obama could have done.