The Real News Network has the article and video Congress Moves Closer To Approving Strike Against Syria.

At 1 minute and 45 seconds into the video Democratic Congressman Juan Vargas of California is asked if he has seen any evidence that makes it certain that Assad is guilty.

Everything that I have read gives me certainty that the information is credible if it wasn’t manufactured. … I want them to promise us that the information that we have seen is not manufactured, that it is correct.

A promise is just a promise unless there are consequences for breaking the promise. I want to see President Obama promise that if it turns out that the intelligence was manufactured he and John Kerry will resign from office. Then maybe we will see how much confidence the two of them have in this intelligence.

There are so many pieces to this segment that I had to choose one as a catchy title.  The Daily Show: John Oliver identifies the Middle East’s big problem is the title I chose. However, the video below is the whole 5 minute segment.

The rest of the show was pretty good, too.

Aljazeera America has the story and video Benghazi report details security flaws at US diplomatic posts.

The U.S. Department of State has known for decades that inadequate security at embassies and consulates worldwide could lead to tragedy, but senior officials ignored the warnings and left some of America’s most dangerous diplomatic posts vulnerable to attack, according to an internal government report obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.
.
.
.
Following the 1983 Beirut bombings, for example, the State Department implemented building safety standards for missions in high-risk areas, which became known as Inman standards, developed by a review panel headed by Bobby R. Inman, the former director of the National Security Agency.

“Thirty years later, neither the U.S. Embassy chancery in Beirut nor a significant number of other U.S. diplomatic facilities in areas designated as ‘high threat’ meet Inman standards,” Sullivan’s panel wrote.

Security problems at diplomatic posts aren’t isolated, the panel said, pointing out that safety concerns can be found at U.S. facilities worldwide. For decades, the State Department has failed to address these vulnerabilities, the panel said, suggesting that Benghazi was a tragedy that might have been avoided.

I thought this story might be interesting to the more right-wing readers of this blog, if there are any. I didn’t realize that there could be a connection to the current Syria issue when I started reading and viewing the video.

The connection is through the lack of security in our embassy in Beirut.  Before Secretary of State Kerry assures us that any blowback from an attack on Syria can be handled, maybe he ought to think about our embassy in Beirut.

Reader Supported News had the article by Dennis Kucinich Top 10 Unproven Claims for War Against Syria.  I don’t want you to think I have suddenly gone soft on my problems with bombing Syria.  You’ll have to read the article to see what Kucinich says about these claims.

Claim #1. The administration claims a chemical weapon was used.

Claim #2: The administration claims the opposition has not used chemical weapons.

Claim #3: The administration claims chemical weapons were used because the regime’s conventional weapons were insufficient

Claim #4: The administration claims to have intelligence relating to the mixing of chemical weapons by regime elements

Claim #5: The administration claims intelligence that Assad’s brother ordered the attack

Claim #6: The administration claims poison gas was released in a rocket attack

Claim #7: The administration claims 1,429 people died in the attack

Claim #8: The administration has made repeated references to videos and photos of the attack as a basis for military action against Syria

Claim #9: The administration claims a key intercept proves the Assad regime’s complicity in the chemical weapons attack

Claim #10: The administration claims that sustained shelling occurred after the chemical weapons attack in order to cover up the traces of the attack

Mother Jones has the article Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math.

Kahan’s data suggest the opposite—that political biases skew our reasoning abilities, and this problem seems to be worse for people with advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy.

When reading my blog, keep in mind that I think I have advanced capacities like scientific literacy and numeracy.

So, if you want unbiased reporting, only read blogs by liberal arts majors.

Now that I think about it, there are instances where I pick apart a faulty argument that is in support of my political beliefs. I don’t find it helpful to make easily refuted arguments for what I believe. I don’t want other people to make those arguments for what I believe either.

However, I don’t think what I have just said  negates what the above study says.  It is probably true that I am more likely to pick apart a study that disagrees with my point of view than I am to do it to a study that agrees with me.

McClatchy news has the story Intercepted call bolsters Syrian chemical-weapons charge, Germans say.

According to Der Spiegel, one of the parties in the intercepted phone call was a “high-ranking member of Hezbollah,” the militant Lebanese movement that’s sent fighters to support the Assad government. That Hezbollah member told the Iranian that “Assad had lost his temper and committed a huge mistake by giving the order for the poison gas use,” according to the magazine’s account.

Apparently this is a different phone call from the one intercepted by Israeli intelligence and passed on to the U.S.A.  Perhaps the evidence will show that the Obama administration is correct in its assessment of who perpetrated the gas attack.  There are other details in the article to add to your store of possible (mis)information about what happened.

I found the coverage of How Senate Foreign Relations Committee members voted on Syria on Politico.

At least Ed Markey did not vote yes, perhaps for the right reasons.  He is reserving final judgment partially because he wants to see more evidence.

Editor:

In the pictures and videos of the victims of the Syrian nerve gas attack people do not behave as would be expected of such victims. The reported death toll rate is far below what one would expect of such an attack.

So let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that Bashar al Assad was not the perpetrator of these attacks.  Even John Kerry said that it would be irrational for Assad to have done so.

The rebels themselves could have perpetrated the attacks or at least staged the videos to make it seem as if there were an attack.  The UN has already determined that some previous attacks have been perpetrated by rebels.  There are reports that the Aug 21 incident was an accident caused by the rebels.  Further reports say that Saudi Arabia is supplying the rebels with chemical weapons.

John Kerry says that it would be irrational to assume the rebels did it, but offers no reasons for such a conclusion.

After President Obama announced his red line, the rebels knew what it would take to drive the U.S.A to action.  Now that the Senate hearings have elicited testimony that there could be further retaliation if the first one does not prevent another nerve agent attack, the rebels know exactly what they have to do to get us to make further attacks.

Is it irrational to think that the rebels now have control of how we manage our response to the Syrian civil war?  Is this kind of control something that we want them to have?

So, if we must respond to the use of chemical weapons, let us make sure we punish the perpetrators rather than rewarding them with the response they seek.  Let us at least wait for the report from the UN inspectors. If we do not get this right, we may be promoting the use of chemical weapons.

/Steven Greenberg

I wonder what President Obama is willing to risk to get his desired resolution from Congress.  Is he willing to promise to resign if it turns out the intelligence analyses he is depending on are wrong? Is anybody in the CIA hierarchy willing to make such a promise?

The Wall Street Cheat Sheet has the article Here’s Buffett’s Billion-Dollar Advice to the Washington Post.  There is a lot more in the article that is worth reading to understand Warren’s advice, but here is a fact we all ought to consider.

Writing Graham in 1975, Buffett began by saying that, “There are two aspects of the pension cost problem upon which management can have significant impact: 1. maintaining rational control over pension plan promises to employees and 2. increasing investment returns on pension plan assets.” While this may seem intuitive to some, it has become clear that both the private and public sector are bad at managing pensions. Very, very bad.

Both private pension plans and Social Security ought to take note of what Buffet is saying.

Since at least 2005, I have been pushing for reforms that would heed Warren Buffet’s advice.

See previous posts Social Insecurity – Investment Rules Need Rethinking, Author’s Response to Social Insecurity – Investment Rules Need Rethinking, and Why a Pay-As-You-Go System (Social Security) is not like a Ponzi scheme.

Even before I started this blog in its current form, I was promoting this solution.

I wrote the following in response to a comment on Facebook by reader DavidF.   I decided to turn it into a post because it clarifies what I think the Congress needs to demand before they make a decision.

Obama is just following the Bush model. Bush went to Congress and got authorization for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. If only the Congress had taken their responsibility more seriously back then, we probably wouldn’t be facing half the situations we are facing now.

Yesterday, I think Kerry made a plausible case for why we need to take action if it turns out that Assad is responsible for the attacks. However, he keeps assuming that Assad did it, even while he says it would be irrational for Assad to have done it. He states without explanation that it is irrational to assume the rebels did it.

I think it is irrational to think that anybody but the rebels did it. Perhaps he does have some evidence to prove his case, but if so, it is so classified that the public will never hear it. I hope the Senators press him on this issue in the classified hearings, and accept nothing short of definitive proof.

Also Kerry’s reasons for not waiting for the UN report are not good enough. If he is so sure that the results will not tell us anything we don’t already know, then he should have no worry about waiting. The problem for me is that the videos of the victims cast severe doubt on some of Kerry’s assumptions. That is why I need to hear the UN report before I would be comfortable making a decision. The Congress ought to tell this to Kerry in no uncertain terms. “No decision until the UN reports.”  If Obama insists on a decision right now, then “No” is the answer.