© REUTERS Ammar Abdullah
A Washington Post-ABC News poll this week showed that Americans overwhelmingly view the Islamic State as a serious threat to vital U.S. interests and, in a significant shift, widely support airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. Seventy-one percent of all Americans say they support airstrikes in Iraq, and 65 percent support strikes in Syria. That is more than double the level of support a year ago for launching airstrikes to punish the Syrian regime.
Comment: Barely a month ago, most Americans were not in favor of bombing Iraq and Syria. However, a constant barrage of propaganda and fear-mongering has done just what it was intended to do:
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Will Congress challenge this? No.
Several prominent Republicans, including Sen. Robert Portman (Ohio), said they believe that Obama can launch airstrikes to combat the militants in both Iraq and Syria without seeking a congressional vote.
"The president has authorization to act now," Portman said in a phone interview Tuesday, adding that he remained "a little confused" about an administration strategy that has been slow to develop.
"We are 'leading from behind,' to use the president's words," he said. "By not leading, we are making it more difficult and more costly."Making what more difficult and more costly?
Bombing wogs.
Once again, the voters, who had never heard of ISIS (aka ISIL) two months ago, are ready to bomb them into the stone age . . . or at least into 2003.
Shock and awe. This did not work in 2003. Maybe it will work now. Hope springs eternal.
We need another public opinion poll. "Where did ISIS come from?" Don't ask. "Who is funding them?" Does it matter? "What do they believe?" Who cares? "What is their connection to Syria?" What's Syria? "What should be done about them?" Shock and awe!
All it takes are some headlines about the threat to America, and the voters are ready to drop bombs.
Bombs will be dropped. Obama is not saying when or on whom. He is only saying this: he does not need the formal approval of Congress.
President Obama is prepared to use U.S. military airstrikes in Syria as part of an expanded campaign to defeat the Islamic State and does not believe he needs formal congressional approval to take that action, according to people who have spoken with the president in recent days.
Comment: Obama is merely using ISIS as an opportunity to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Addad.
President Obama is now discussing matters with members of the Council on Foreign Relations, always referred to as "bipartisan foreign policy experts."
Why now? Because the White House is losing influence. This is a serious threat to a lame-duck President. It's turning into lame duck dynasty.Obama discussed his plans at a dinner with a bipartisan group of foreign policy experts this week at the White House and made clear his belief that he has the authority to attack the militant Islamist group on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border to protect U.S national security, multiple people who participated in the discussion said. The move to attack in Syria would represent a remarkable escalation in strategy for Obama, who has sought during his presidency to reduce the U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.
This is year six of the Obama Administration. Now he is willing to listen to the CFR? What is the evidence that he (0r any other President since FDR) ever stopped listening? I am unaware of such evidence.Obama's dinner with the foreign policy experts - a gathering that included former high-ranking officials in Republican administrations, including Richard Haass and Stephen Hadley - was part of an intensive White House effort in recent months to expand its sphere of influence. Although the president has on a semi-regular basis invited in outside experts for conversations, the White House has shifted its tone amid a series of high-profile foreign policy crises, including Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza and the advance of the Islamic State deep into Iraq.
In private conversations, senior White House national security aides have expressed greater willingness to hear new ideas and solicit input in hopes of doing a better job of developing strategy and communicating it to the public, said several influential foreign policy experts who have talked with Obama advisers in recent months.
What of the 12 U.S. military bases in Iraq? Remember them? (1) Why are they there? (2) Why haven't they been attacked by ISIS? No one ever mentions this. Here is a shattered former nation - shattered by U.S. troops - in which the U.S. government has permanent - read "forever" - commitments. If there is a threat to the homeland United States from ISIS, why has ISIS avoided attacking these bases?
Comment: Perhaps because they know better than to bite the hand of their creators and those who feed them, or perhaps it has not been necessary yet to create the appropriate false flag attack.
How will these bases be defended against ISIS, assuming that ISIS ever bothers with them?
But if ISIS couldn't care less about 12 military bases in Iraq, then why should it care about the U.S. homeland? What can it do about the U.S. homeland?
But if the U.S. homeland is not at risk, why do most Americans want Obama to bomb ISIS?
What do the bipartisan experts think? It's all a bit vague - it always is - but this is clear: they think we are there for the long haul, i.e., forever. "The job has just begun." Keep this phrase in mind. Pass it down to your children. They can pass it down to their children.
They are not shocked. They are not awed. This means that taxpayers are in this for the long haul.Jon B. Alterman, who directs the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the real challenge Obama faces is not articulating his approach but executing it and brokering the political deals that will underpin any military strike.
"The problem is policy follow-through," Alterman said, adding that the danger of leading with "a military operation is you start thinking the job is done, when the job has just begun. What the U.S. strategy is trying to do is deny haven to [the Islamic State], and doing it in Iraq with a government that is chaotic at best will take some time. Doing it in Syria is going to be even harder."
Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who served as President Bill Clinton's national security adviser and attended Monday's dinner, said Obama "has his arms around this" and is prepared to "lay out a comprehensive strategy to deal with ISIS long-term."
Harman described the dinner Monday as "focused and thoughtful." Over a dinner of D'Anjou pear salad and Chilean sea bass, Obama, Vice President Biden and the outside experts engaged in a deep discussion of the options to combat the Islamic State, those who participated said.
Republicans in Congress plan to lead from behind.
Don't be shocked. Don't be awed. Just get out your checkbooks. This is forever . . . or until the U.S. government defaults.
Most westerners do not know this.
The wars on wogs have been going on for centuries.
The Anti-Wog War in the Middle East has been going on since the late 1800s. This all started because the British, (at that time still a big time world power) (before the Americans put a spanner in the works) needed oil for their oil-fired war-ships. The British knew they couldn't trust the Americans for oil, because the Americans had learned from the British! "Never pass up an opportunity to bone someone, even your 'friends' ''!
So it came to pass that the British started boneing ''the wogs''. Or more accurately, a new group of ''wogs'', because they had been porking the Indian ''wogs'' for centuries!
At the beginning of the 20th century, the ''internal combustion engine'' was also coming on line as the latest thing. This contributed to the national sodomy of any poor nation which had ''wogs'' and oil under their soil.
It could be said, (and I will right now) that ''wogs'' are not essential for lining up a nation to be shafted by the west. I mean, look at what the Machiavellian sociopaths of the NATO warmongering cabal have done to Ukraine!
Sprung Neo-Nazis, (almost as bad as Neo-Cons), piggy-backing onto a movement consisting of well meaning but naive hippies who were too brain-dead to realize they had been used by the US State Department to launch another ''Color Revolution (!)!
And hey , don't quote me, just Google the text of the phone conversation between ''Bag-Hag Nuland'' and Pyatt at which time she is assigning ''Yats'' for PM in Ukraine. Or Google ''nuland five billion'' and 37,000 articles will come up and you can choose what to read. This is regarding the amount of scratch the US has pumped into Ukraine ''NGOs" for regime change.
This is a moot point however.
Everyone knows that the US government has secretly developed the ''spandex yoga tights'' so that Americans will not read. They flock to almost empty strip malls to study the buttocks of the few remaining women around twenty years of age because due to another psyops program, ''The Kardashians'', Americans are bombarded with images of buttocks everywhere they go.
This ''buttocks craze'' has caused Americans to stop caring about events around the world unless it has something to do with some woman wearing spandex bike shorts or see through yoga tights.
It has been proven that Hip-Hop star, Sir Mix-A-Lot was really a CIA operative who started the decline into buttocks-worship with his tune, ''I Like Big Butts".
It has been said that the gang infested Los Angeles are may be the solution to the problem of ISIS in Mexico, if such a state of affairs does actually exist.
It is hoped by reasonable people that instead of a "coalition of psychopathic bomb dropping madmen", blasting Mexico back into the Stone Age, a coalition of Bloods and Crips could be hired to clean out the radicals in Tijuana.
Some, but not too many of the positions expressed here can be proven if a person bothered to read, ''Internal Combustion'', and ''Banking on Baghdad'' by Irwin Black. These well researched books can be projected onto a woman's buttocks so someone with ''buttock watching addiction'' can dual task and not waste any valuable time.
You will have to Google Bloods and Crips yourself because you are big and should do your own homework.