Cruise Missles anyone?
 

Let us pray for those who are innocent bystanders under fire from them tonight in Syria.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/06/politi...ary/index.html

Barney

Americans as a rule don't really care about collateral damage, no matter how man....

Targets supposed to be military air facilities, afaik.
We now own whatever results, Russian reaction included.

Donny does exactly what Hillary suggested. Hmmmm...

Just a fun fact..... one hundred years ago today the USA enters World War One!


Yes 4/06/1917.



Barney

Putting aside the need to do this, and yes it needed done, how did Trump get permission to do this? Launching cruise missiles is an act of war. Did congress declare war on Syria? Did congress okay the use of these for Trump? I am not disputing the need for this, but what about the precedent it is setting. Allowing a president unilateral power to act with military force is absolutely not okay.

Elections have consequences.

The President has the power to act in this way.


Barney

I don't think so. I don't know for sure. I thought the president could only use military force in the event of imminent attack on the US. Otherwise it required the approval of congress. I know it got muddied when Bush wanted to attack Iraq, but I didn't think it was change.

I suspect Bannon wouldn't​ approve this action. He may leave over it, my uswag.

Fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles launched at Syria after suspected chemical attack in Idlib province, Pentagon says.
http://aje.io/8vwp

Donny answers McCain, embarrasses Obama, and obliquely warns the little guy in N Korea

And of course it divides and gets his critics off balance.:D

http://www.kfvs12.com/story/35093233...thout-congress

""The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, long after American troops began fighting in Vietnam, required the president to consult with Congress before sending U.S. armed forces into combat unless there already had been a declaration of war. The troops could not stay more than 90 days unless lawmakers backed the decision. The law also sought to give the president "leeway to respond to attacks or other emergencies," according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

And it is that leeway that presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and now Trump have used to their advantage.""



I suspect very little push back will happen as long as the results are positive. Especially today when the final branch of our government is handed over to the right.



Barney

The MIC must be proud of their new puppet. I'd wager the stock market will boom this morning.

And of course Americans outraged over the chemical attack will care nothing about our own collateral damage even if it's a school full of children.

No, the school full of children were sent to the hospital or the graveyard a few days ago by Assad, so they were already out of harms way. :rolleyes:

Hey Barney,
Thanks for he link and info. That is the answer to my question.

...and what Obama never did.

And within hours of her speech.
So is trump considering Hillary as a replacement for Tillerson? :D

What next?
NYT.
http://pubx.co/zzWAgs

What next? Huffpo.
Kremlin: Risk of US-Russia collision in Syria 'significantly increased'
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/07/politi...ike/index.html

We always have new wars under a republican president, it's what republican presidents are good at when they need to deflect on their poor choices, poor policies and falling approval ratings. And it's a good return for their campaign doners. I wonder, how would we fare against Russia? The rich, they start the wars, the poor pay for them.

The buffoon didn't think things through.....

"WASHINGTON -- Russia said Friday it was cutting a hotline intended to prevent midair incidents over Syria in response to the U.S. missile attack on a Syrian base. The response demonstrates Moscow’s readiness to defy Washington and could even put the two nuclear superpowers on a course toward military confrontation.

Russia President Vladimir Putin signaled he was ready to risk a clash with the U.S. and abandon hopes for mending ties under President Donald Trump, rather than accept the humiliation of standing by while his ally is bombed."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-a...syria-strikes/

What's interesting is that Trump's supporters have stuck with him through all sorts of aberrant behavior, making it appear that there was nothing he could do that they would reject. But the alt-right faction of the base is apoplectic about the Syria attack. I guess neo-Nazis like gassing Arab babies.

Sigh...
 

Syria action? How Vietnam. It's all about the sorties (59 missiles!) and not their impact.

1. Meaningless target, they have more.
2. They knew we were coming from jump.
3. Damage minimized by their foreknowledge.

But hey, fifty-nine missiles! Aren't we badass? And don't pretend we give a shit about the Syrian people. If we did, we'd have invited their recent refugees in with open arms.

But, to get back to Vietnam, in 1975 sailors on the USS Midway threw flying machines off the flight deck into the South China Sea like toys, untold $$$ to clear space, so one overloaded Cessna could try to land with a foreign family in it. (South Vietnamese AF Major Buan-Ly succeeded.)

Trump would shoot the plane down then crow about how tough he is.

Fuck'em.

What Politifact glosses over is that Obama cut a politically expedient deal with his BFF Putin to let Russia take the lead with Syria to dispose of their chem weapons. The April 4th attack is a product of that deal. From the Politifact article:

One way or another, subsequent events have proved Kerry wrong.

In fact, international investigators concluded last year that the Syrian government had gamed the system.

So, last year the world knew that Assad still had chem weapons, and no one did anything about it. We knew that Russia failed to keep up their end of the agreement last year, and did nothing. We knew that Assad would likely use those weapons because he's used them before, and we did nothing about it. Obama told Assad and Russia in 2014 that we'd keep the use of force as an option if Assad didn't get rid of those weapons, but we did nothing.

Obama and Kerry look like fools, and IMHO they have blood on their hands.

can't defend trump so you deflect to obama...again......:rolleyes:

Spewing bullshit as usual. Obama asked for approval from the congress which was controlled the Party of No, and they said NO. And now you are blaming Obama and Kerry.
What do you expect, the GOP has a multitude of puppet masters and one never knows which one is pulling the strings. So blaming Obama is a hedge tactic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b051b9a9da355d

Blaming Obama for Putin and Assad concealing some of their weapons? Had Obama launched 59 missiles 4 years ago, it's highly doubtful he would have destroyed as much poison gas as was removed under the agreement. Put blame where it belongs, Whell.

The same person less then a week ago seemingly on the ropes, having many negative issues daily. Trouble for us to keep up with at times. Seemingly a never ending, new one coming out showing the ineptitude, out of his league, having to learn on the job. Must I go on......

Now after a few missiles with little thought before he is now presidential????


If the role were to reversed and this was HRC one could only imagine the conspiracies on the real reasons for the attack.




Barney

Trump's Nazi supporters are pissed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...orters/522336/

He picked the wrong taget it should have been Assad's palace, preferably with him in it.

I don't understand this post at all. Your premise that a military response 4 years ago must have the same calibrated use of force as the strike this week is absolutely false. Obama likely had support for a broader military response. What stopped Obama back then was....Obama.

Obama never wanted to get involved in the Syrian civil war, particularly heading into the 2012 election. But talking tough leading up to the election might score some points. Obama stated in 2012 that the "red line" that would trigger US military involvement would be the use of chem or bio weapons.

Syria then crossed that red line in August 2013. Rather that involve the US military, Obama agreed to let Moscow take the lead with Syria because Putin suggested Russia could get Assad to get rid of their chem weapons, and Syria later made a show of signing the Chem Weapons Convention, which on paper prohibited Syria from producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons. This gave Obama a politically acceptable way to back away from war footing with Syria.

This one wasn't hard to predict, really. Russia has an interest in keeping Assad in place, and probably was never really interested in disarming Assad. Putin likely wanted the US to take a back seat to help prop up Assad. Even a writer in HuffPo suggested that Obama's alternative to counter Russian support of Assad and Russian attacks on Syrian rebels was to start attacking Syrian military forces. North and South Vietnam all over again would likely have been the result, but letting Russia take the lead created that scenario.

So, yeah, I'm putting the blame where it belongs. Obama and Kerry for backing away. You can blame Putin, but he is who he is: a thug who is predictably working to pursue his own interests, and he never gave a rats ass about the Syrian people anyway. At the end of the day Obama and Kerry were fooled into taking Putin at his word. You can blame the UN Security Council, but the UNSC has always been a mess, so that doesn't hold much water either.

EDIT: oh, and let's not forget that the option to pull back militarily put a premium the option of pumping money to the Syrian rebels. Apparently quite a bit of that money flowed to ISIS, who moved into Syria once Assad started bombing and gassing his own citizens.

It was just a few weeks ago that Russia and China blocked a UNSC resolution to sanction Syria over use of chem weapons.

The resolution, proposed by Britain and France months ago and endorsed by the United States last week, would have imposed sanctions on a handful of Syrian military officials and entities for having dropped chlorine-filled barrel bombs on opposition-held areas on at least three occasions in 2014 and 2015, according to a United Nations panel.

The UNSC is a damn mess.

Revisionism, pure and simple. There wasn't broad support for a Syria strike. The agreement with Russia to get rid of the weapons was a relief to nearly everyone, particularly Congress. From Sep 2014:

Congress can breathe a sigh of relief: Lawmakers won’t have to take a tough vote on authorizing the use of military force in Syria anytime soon.

The preliminary agreement between the United States and Russia on turning over Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 sets a deadline of November of this year for international inspectors to enter the Middle Eastern country.

The delay will allow Capitol Hill to pivot from an unpopular decision on military strikes — which many members in both parties opposed — to instead confront a pair of looming fiscal crises, funding the government and raising the debt ceiling.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...ia-vote-096806

From a bit earlier:

Although Congressional leaders hailed his decision to seek the permission of lawmakers who had been clamoring for a say, the turnabout leaves Mr. Obama at the political mercy of House Republicans, many of whom have opposed him at every turn and have already suggested that Syria’s civil war does not pose a threat to the United States. His decision raises the possibility that he would be the first president in modern times to lose a vote on the use of force, much as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain did in Parliament last week.

Mr. Obama overruled the advice of many of his aides who worried about just such a defeat, and Republican Congressional officials said Saturday that if a vote were taken immediately, the Republican-controlled House would not support action.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/wo...ast/syria.html

I'm not easy with the general favorable reaction to the cruise missile attack.

Piece on Slate is appropos:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...errifying.html

At least Trump destroyed the runways so they cannot be used by Assad to launch more planes.

Nope. The same airfield was used to bomb the same town within 24 hours.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...f9e_story.html

Syria has more than one airbase, estimated to be somewhere around 15 or so.
So this is just one and what happens next is in Russia's hands. IMO, this was an ill conceived and rushed operation for the headlines and not an eye to the future.

Oh.

Then what was the point then?

Cynical distraction?

It's not the first time a US president launches missile strikes that do not amount to much but boost ratings.
http://aje.io/3pxh