The Real News Network has the video The Most Sought After Chess Piece with Larry Wilkerson the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell.  Here is just the beginning of the wise advice from Wilkerson.

DESVARIEUX: So, Larry, it sounds like there’s no smoking gun here. UN inspectors, they’re still in Syria currently. But the Obama administration seems to be pushing forward, saying that they are blaming Assad for this chemical attack. Why would the Obama administration come out with such aggressive language towards Assad and this strike if there’s no smoking gun? What wouldn’t they just wait for the UN inspectors to have hard evidence before proceeding?

WILKERSON: That’s an excellent question. And if I hadn’t lived through this sort of operation with three other presidents, I’d have difficulty answering that question.

As it is, I would say that probably they got too far forward in the foxhole, too aggressive. The president probably acted on an NSA intercept or something like that and made some conclusions he probably shouldn’t have made. And now they’re trying to walk it back a little bit.

I just heard that the inspectors have been asked through the Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general, to not go to the area because we claim the area is contaminated by conventional munitions that Assad has continued to use. That’s preposterous, because if it was a neurotoxic agent, we wouldn’t necessarily have to find things on the ground. It would be nice if we did, but what we’re going to do is take blood samples and so forth of the alleged victims and see if they have indeed been affected by some sort of chemical agent, in this case VX or sarin or a facsimile thereof.

So this really looks bad right now. It looks a lot like what I went through in 2003 in preparing Colin Powell for his now infamous presentation at United Nations in February of that year, where we said Saddam had an active nuclear program, had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons, had major contacts with al-Qaeda and an active nuclear program, all of which we now know was patently false.

Here is the video:

You have to wonder why the President is so dead set against listening to reason. I have proposed one reason, that Obama is trying to cover his ass over a CIA action that went wrong. Does anyone ever learn from history that the cover-up can get you in more trouble than the original crime? Can you think of any other, less idiotic reasons?