Obama wins Nobel Prize Again

Well, they technically gave it to the OPCW, a group that goes around destroying chemical weapons.  But that's like giving it to the IAEA or the UN or even the United States military.  Which would of course be ridiculous.

No the award was given to Obama because Putin pulled his ass out of the fire and drummed up a phony deal for Assad to get rid of his chem-weapons to avert a military strike that wasn't going to happen. Clearly they couldn't give it to Putin or Assad and besides, they believe Obama created the peace.

If you're not convinced just watch the State Department's daily briefing today, where the spokeswoman spent the first few minutes reading a prepared statement congratulating them, including the following:

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize today to the OPCW no doubt reflects the critical role that they are playing in the Syrian CW crisis. As people know, in March of this year, the OPCW was called upon by the UN Secretary General to support a UN investigation into allegations of CW use in Syria.

A UN team staffed by OPCW chemical weapons experts investigated the August 21st attack and confirmed utilizing OPCW-designated laboratories that sarin was used to kill over a thousand Syrians.

Obama is awesome!   Of course they couldn't give it to Malala because that would be a direct smack in the face of the Taliban and Islamic barbarians worldwide, which would have brought unwanted attention to their war against human rights and women's rights and something like that might produce a fatwa. So giving it to Obama was the safe play.

What Just Happened?

Well, we seem to have a deal:

The United States and Russia have reached an agreement that calls for Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons to be removed or destroyed by the middle of 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday.

Under a “framework” agreement, international inspectors must be on the ground in Syria by November, Mr. Kerry said, speaking at a news conference with the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.

Alrighty then.  For some reason Putin punted last Monday under the incredible pressure placed on him by the Obama administration and victory is at hand.  Obama the master tactician--pressuring war made peace!  The new doctrine. 

This despite the fact that last Monday the threat of an attack was perhaps at its lowest probability. Putin/Assad were facing the specter of a miniscule bombing run designed to take out a few bridges and rocket launchers at a time when even that plan had little if any support in either Congress or the international community.  Obama was like a marionette dangling in the corner he'd back himself into with no way out aside from becoming a hated war criminal or calling everything off and losing his entire legacy.  His scribes were rewriting his Tuesday war speech every hour.    

Then Putin saved his bacon.  So what the fork happened?

The agreement will of course be spun by our fair and balanced media as the greatest comeback since the days of Clinton, which will elevate the president just when he needs it--facing a fight against the real enemies and terrorists and neanderthals of the GOP and Tea Party over debt and government funding. Biden will probably call this outcome the gutsiest move since Obama's Bin Laden raid back in 2004.

Of course the true test for our country and the world will be 1) can Assad truly be disarmed, and 2) will Assad be punished for already using WMDs?  It's going to be a herculean task to disarm a tyrant during a civil war, probably impossible without a legitimate cease-fire and somebody's boots on the ground, both of which are problematic.  But this doesn't have to start happening until November according to the 'framework' agreement so Obama can have a free shot at the Republicans before things get tricky again towards Thanksgiving and Christmas (unless somebody shoots off WMDs again in the interim).

That gives the regime a few months to continue dispersing their arsenal and killing the rebels, which include head-chopping cannibals associated with AQ, or even perhaps moving some out of the country to friendly neighbors.  But the story can now disappear off the front pages for awhile. 

As to a true outcome, IF, and it's a big if, the chemicals can be located, counted, moved and destroyed then part of the victory will become real, but only part. The UN cannot leave a precedent where a dictator can gas his own people and then when pressured give up the weapons under agreement, only to escape completely without consequences.  So Assad will either have to be hauled off to the ICC at some point or sent to Allah to hobnob with Saddam. 

If that last step doesn't occur this will be a failure, whether the media or historians admit it or not. But surely the present situation is better than the bombing that was being considered, making it a preferred outcome despite the president literally stumbling into it.  For some reason we can thank president (and Times editorialist) Vladimir Putey Putin for enabling that stumble....for reasons still unknown.

MORE  9/14/13

This article, purportedly of several ISIS fighters (AQ-related) in Syria, explains in very vivid detail why the west/United States is losing the Global War on Terror.   These young men are committed soldiers for a cause, whereas the population of the United States (and the west at large) is not committed to the fight at all, mainly because our leadership is afraid to make us committed lest it appear to be a war on Islam.

We are going to lose if we don't see the stakes involved.

A NEW DAY  9/14/13

...and the strategy and rhetoric seems to change with every sunrise.  Here's Jay Carney on Wednesday, explaining how the threat of force alone had forced Putin to the negotiating table...

There is no question that the credible threat of U.S. military force brought us this diplomatic opening.

Just three days later here is the Decider Guy in his weekly address:

This week, when I addressed the nation on Syria, I said that – in part because of the credible threat of U.S. military force – there is the possibility of a diplomatic solution.

What will tomorrow bring? 

More Pretzels

Here's White House spokesman Josh Earnest doing his own pretzel imitation...



Gee, the smartest administration in history doesn't know that regime change in Iraq was the stated policy of the US Government, not just the Bush administration? 

It's funny watching Henry remind him of what Obama said in his famous 'dumb war' speech in 2002--the speech that basically got him elected over Hillary, while Earnest pretends he hasn't studied the analogy enough to comment.  Guffaw.

Mr Josh assures us Syria won't be open-ended, hell, Bush didn't lobby anyone that Iraq would be open-ended either.  And good Lord, this same administration up until recently was saying Assad's 'days are numbered'.   They've now done a complete 180 on that, assuring us that Obama wants nothing to do with regime change.

Earnest is right, there really isn't a good comparison between Syria and Iraq. He knows that unlike Saddam, Assad has not recently shot at our aircraft or tried to assassinate a president, and certainly hasn't invaded neighboring countries.  He's done some bad stuff, like killing his own people, acting as a conduit for Hizballah and probably having Rafik Hariri killed, but this is basic tinpot behavior and not directly threatening to the US.

The funnier thing is watching president smart war saying he can do a quick in and out, a shot across the bow to remind Big Ass of our big stick should he ever consider using those WMDs again, which begs the question of what happens if we do a pinprick attack and leave Chinless in power and he uses WMD again somewhere down the line.  After all, the international norm must be maintained at all costs, no matter what the UN or anyone else says.  Except in Iraq. 

About those Chemical Weapons..

While it seems certain that chemical weapons were used in Syria, the 'whodunit' is still up for grabs.  Many are asking why Assad would launch an attack just days after a UN inspection team arrived.  It's a good question.  It's also apparently a question the administration doesn't want answered:

"If the Syrian government had nothing to hide and wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have ceased its attacks on the area and granted immediate access to the U.N. five days ago," a senior Obama administration official said.

"At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the U.N. team is too late to be credible, including because the evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a result of the regime's persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days," the official added.

Sounds like an Iraq flashback--take our word for it! So, if one believes the chinless dictator wouldn't go that far that would mean the 'rebels' launched the attack as a way to pull the west into the battle and stop their losses. But believing the SMC/FSA fighters would have access seems rather absurd since western intelligence is embedded in their ranks.  So where would the WMDs have come from?

One wild guess is of course Iraq.  The Russians and Iranians have been pressing this angle, using our old friend Izzat al-Douri as a facilitator to help the various Sunni Iraq insurgent groups either obtain Saddam-era munitions or supervising new production to be smuggled across the Turkish border into the battle zones.  However, Russia and Iran seem to be the only ones pushing this idea and both stand to gain from it in the propaganda department if true, so it must be taken with a grain-silo sized pillar of salt.

Others are reminding folks about the other Arab tinpot who dabbled in WMD--Moahmar Gaddafi.  Yep, the 'rebels' indeed found a stash of chemical weapons in 2011 after the tyrant was sent to Allah:

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi had an undeclared stockpile of chemical weapons, international inspectors have confirmed. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said inspectors visited Libya this week and said inspectors found sulphur mustard and artillery shells 'which they determined are chemical munitions.'

This means the shells were not filled with chemicals, but were designed specifically to be loaded with chemical weapons. 'They are not ready to use, because they are not loaded with agents," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said. Among the chemical munitions they found were stocks of sulphur mustard agent, which can cause severe blistering. All the newly declared materials are being stored at the Ruwagha depot, in the south-east of the country.

This, coupled with the very strange official reactions to the Benghazi terror attack might explain some things, assuming anything is ever fully explained.  First off they might start with why Samantha Power, our newly minted Ambassador to the UN, remained on vacation and skipped an emergency UN meeting about the chem-attack in Syria. Power is a vocal advocate of "Responsibility to Protect" and was a voice in the ear of the administration advocating involvement in Libya. Having Libyan WMD liberated into AQ hands and then used in Syria might be a bit problematic (or as Jesse Jackson might say, frowned upon).

Then again, all of the above is predicated on the rebels surreptitiously using WMD to frame Assad.  If it was ever discovered the rebels used WMD, especially AQ-back factions, it would change Obama's 'calculus' (maybe a derivative instead of an integral) and leave the west with no horses to back (they long ago lost the ability to fall back into the Assad camp should things go wrong).  Maybe that's why the administration doesn't want the UN to discover anything.  Alas, these 40 pound brains are still trying to plan a peace conference with Russia and the rebels.  The same Russians blaming the attacks on the rebels.  Not very flexible.

Overall most people would agree that getting involved in Syria is a loser and Obama knows it, both in his brain and through the polls.  His 'red line' claptrap was mere bluffing ahead of an election but now it has backed us into a corner that only a few cruise missiles will solve.  Let's hope they know what they are doing--many lives hang in the balance.

MORE  8/25/13

Scott Shane of the Times puts Syria and the UN in perspective:

While administration officials emphasized that Mr. Obama had not decided to take action, they said he was determined not to be drawn into a protracted debate over gaining access for the United Nation investigators, given their doubts, at this point, that it would produce credible findings.

Funny, why were the UN inspectors even in Damascus in the first place? The recent attack occurred AFTER they had arrived; the earlier attacks they were there to investigate happened weeks and months ago. So what's with the suddenly short time range of investigation?  Very strange, as if they don't want them to find anything right now.  

And how similar to the criticism on Iraq. The president doesn't want to get into a negotiation with the dictator over UN access looking for WMDs as he prepares for attacks without a UN mandate. But it won't be spun that way.

Politics aside, if indeed the chem-rocket was launched by Hizballah via Iran, which seems to be taking control at the moment, does the US not want such a determination made public via a UN team?   Sure sounds like some justification somebody could eventually use for taking out Iran's nuke program.   

SHOCKED  8/26/13

John Kerry and Jay Carney expressed the president's shocked outrage over the horrible deaths caused by the chemical attack today. Also shockingly, nobody in the White House press room suggested that Obama's foot-dragging after his red line was crossed (the first couple of times) could have contributed to such a horrid scene.  Carney was prepared for the question--indeed he tried to parse between 'small scale' and 'wide scale' attacks, making a distinction insofar as their response or potential response.  In a nutshell, what he seemed to be saying is the small scale attacks were only worth 'ramping up' support to include small arms while a large scale attack warrants something more, which he refused to characterize.  This despite reports that the small arms supposedly sent after the first red line crossing still haven't arrived. 

Just a wag, but by leaking to the press various tidbits about what might happen, ie, cruise missile attack, the administration is testing the waters to see how much response they need. Otherwise they would have remained entirely mum, not wanting to give away any tactical or strategic advantage.   If the waters show support from the public for some bombing, and if the intelligence community determines that retaliatory responses from the various Syrian or Iranian proxy factions can be controlled or won't materialize, they'll go for it sooner than later.  If the waters are a little too choppy they'll go for some kind of delayed UN, we are the world reply or even try to run attack permission through Congress (hoping for failure).

Saving Syria

While the president draws red wavy lines in the sand over the presumed WMDs in Syria (instead of calling for UN inspectors) and the prospect of shock and awe 2.0 lingers over the region, it seems Obama should unclench his fist and open the hand of diplomacy.  We've got some top notch diplomats just sitting around while they could be saving the world.

There's Nancy Pelosi:

Dennis Kucinich:

And Diane Sawyer:

Gee, maybe if someone just took some new music to load on Assad's iPod this whole warmongering, WMD thing could be avoided..

Where is the Ambassador?

So, the administration sent their UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, on five network Sunday shows after the 9/11 Benghazi attacks to explain a terrorist attack but they don't send her out similarly today to explain why the Palestinians told us to screw off regarding pleas not to pursue the recent statehood vote?  In the UN?  Her bailiwick?  

It would be nice if someone, anyone, in the mainstream media could pivot off the former and onto the latter.  Maybe that someone anyone could explain why the administration or at least the UN Ambassador should not receive any blowback over what seems like a failure.  What does it mean when the United States, Canada and the Czech Republic are the only major nations to vote with Israel against Palestinian statehood?  Anyone?

A New Hockey Stick

This graph from Zerohedge made some news yesterday after the 'better than expected' jobs report..

Why, it's beginning to look like a hockey stick.  Sort of like this one..

Since Mann's hockey stick gave rise to a UN panel to mitigate a coming man-made danger, which resulted in a plan to regulate the world's economy by limiting carbon emissions, shouldn't the government's new hockey stick give rise to some kind of plan to mitigate the growing dependency crisis?   After all, that chart is rising at about the same level as CO2.  It's unsustainable. 

To Syria and Beyond?

The problem with going to war, oops, kinetic military operations, against countries who are not directly threatening America, just shooting their own people, is drawing a line. Where do we stop? CNN is reporting that 15 people (some say 100) were mowed down by Syrian government forces for the crime of protesting their government, including a soldier who refused to fire on his own people. Do the Syrian protesters not deserve kinetic protection from the UN/NATO going forward? How about the Yemenis? Or Ethiopian Christians being terrorized by Muslims? If not, why not? Someone needs to explain this.

Meanwhile, days have turned into a week but Gaddafi isn't a tough guy, he won't last much longer once we cut the supply lines to his hired killer army. The new face of the world Ban Ki-moon, perhaps sensing this or perhaps realizing how fuzzy everything seems, has spoken. The face hiding from the world, Obama, has not, at least publicly.

Holed up in the White House all day? Perhaps he spent the time giving NATO or the French some pointers. Or maybe he got some pointers on his putting. Or perhaps it's the other way around--perhaps he was told to sit tight and await further instructions from Ban Ki--after all, he was locked out of the Oval Office today without a key. Ban, ki, -- a warning! Though it's more likely he was drafting the "look, I did war better than Bush" victory speech.

IAEA takes action

The U.N. nuclear watchdog did not know about any undeclared atomic plant in Syria and has asked Damascus about information that such a site was targeted by an Israeli air strike, a spokeswoman said on Monday.

As was recently pointed out, Mohamed ElBaradei won a Nobel Prize while completely missing a nuclear program in Libya. Now it appears the IAEA might have missed one in Syria. Trying to think of a word here...



Feckless, that's it.

MORE 10/17/07

Perhaps the spirit of Alger Hiss lives on.