Reader Supported News has the article America’s Empire Has No Clothes.

Pelosi is 73. She has been in Congress since 1987. She has not led any crusade against chemical weapons used by Iraq, the U.S., or anyone else. On September 4, she refused to comment on past U.S. support for Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. But NOW chemical weapons are important to her? Not credible.
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Kerry is 70. He served in the Senate for almost 30 years (1985-2013). He did not object loudly to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons at the time, nor did he make a big issue of it after the fact. Despite his active pursuit of a variety of well-publicized issues, Kerry has never led any crusade against chemical weapons used by anyone. But NOW chemical weapons are important to him? Not credible.

So the question is, “Why now has this issue become so important that we are willing to start a new front in the war over this?”  We shouldn’t rush in until we have some answers to this question.  Perhaps looking at my previous post Iran-Contra Redux? Prince Bandar Heads Secret Saudi-CIA Effort to Aid Syrian Rebels, Topple Assad will start supplying the answers.

Of course Kerry has the excuse that he is not working for himself now.  Now he is presenting the President’s point of view.

The other reason for the President jumping on board now may be that McCain and Graham have been pushing the President hard on this issue to the point of questioning his manhood if he does not take bold action.  Look at the “Iran-Contra Redux?” post mentioned above to see more of the why of the  McCain/Graham connection.

Democracy Now has two related video interviews.  The first is Iran-Contra Redux? Prince Bandar Heads Secret Saudi-CIA Effort to Aid Syrian Rebels, Topple Assad.

The Wall Street Journal recently revealed new details about how Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud — Saudi’s former ambassador to the United States — is leading the effort to prop up the Syrian rebels. Intelligence agents from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Jordan and other allied states are working at a secret joint operations center in Jordan to train and arm hand-picked Syrian rebels. The Journal also reports Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime. “Really what he’s doing is he’s reprising a role that he played in the 1980s when he worked with the Reagan administration to arrange money and arms for mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and also worked with the CIA in Nicaragua to support the Contras,” says Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Entous. “So in many ways this is a very familiar position for Prince Bandar, and it’s amazing to see the extent to which veterans of the CIA were excited to see him come back because, in the words of a diplomat who knows Bandar, he brings the Arabic term wasta, which means under-the-table clout. You know his checks are not going to bounce and that he’ll be able to deliver the money from the Saudis.”

The second part of the interview is titled U.S.-Russian Tensions Heighten over Syria; Roots of Conflict Stem from NATO Bombing of Libya.

Part two of our conversation with Wall Street Journal national security correspondent Adam Entous. He discusses his latest article, “U.S. Decided Not to Horse-Trade with Russia on Assad.” Entous writes: “President Barack Obama’s 15 seconds of face time with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, while American and Russian warships patrolled the eastern Mediterranean, spoke to a deep chill that has created one of the biggest complications to the U.S.’s plan to strike Syria.”

The links you find on the Democracy Now web site look like they might merit some serious follow-up.

For those of you who have been waiting for me to blame George Bush for the problems in Syria, The New York Times has taken care of that for me with the article The Bush Burden.

He’s there in every corner of Congress where a microphone fronts a politician, there in Russia and the British Parliament and the Vatican. You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he’s the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria.

His legacy is paralysis, hypocrisy and uncertainty practiced in varying degrees by those who want to learn from history and those who deny it. Let’s grant some validity to the waffling, though none of it is coming from the architects of the worst global fiasco in a generation.

For those of you who think of this as the Bush legacy, what is your rejoinder?

McClatchy news has the story Russia gave UN 100-page report in July blaming Syrian rebels for Aleppo sarin attack.

 BERLIN — Russia says a deadly March sarin attack in an Aleppo suburb was carried out by Syrian rebels, not forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, and it has delivered a 100-page report laying out its evidence to the United Nations.

A statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry website late Wednesday said the report included detailed scientific analysis of samples that Russian technicians collected at the site of the alleged attack, Khan al Asal in northern Syria. The attack killed 26 people.

A U.N. spokesman, Farhan Haq, confirmed that Russia delivered the report in July.

What are we to make of this?  Do we need the Russians to teach us how to do a forensic analysis of a crime scene that can be trusted by neutral observers because it follows international protocols for such an investigation?

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.
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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.