Do we really have to take military action to Syria?

another in a long line of disappointments.

Obama is still quite respected, although some of that may be because his immediate predecessor was so bad. George W Bush was the worst president in living memory, and his omnishambles of a presidency casts a very long shadow.

Btw I don't really know about the opinion on the continent.

Whaaaa?!?! Take a good look in the mirror, hawkeye.....You might not like what you see.

America's so-called "decline" manifests itself because of crooked politicians who somehow one way or another get the US presidency. GWB's brain was addled, not only stupid from years of cocaine use, but alcohol abuse. His brain was dysfunctional and he graduated from Yale University with a C-! The simple reason he got even a C- which is a failing grade, is because he came from a rich family and they donated millions of dollars to Yale.....everything has its price! GWB was UNQUALIFIED to be president of the most powerful nation on earth! He, for all practical purposes, should not be elected dog catcher.

Yes, I will agree America is not doing as well as it could but GWB's contribution completely trashed America. Going to war ostensibly to capture Bin Ladin when in reality he was going for two reasons: 1) get rid of an Israeli enemy, Saddam Hussein, and capture the Iraqi oil wells, so vast, that if the unexplored oil wells were put into effect they would dwarf Saudi Arabia. Even Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraqi invasion, said Iraq is swimming in oil, and dick cheny was quivering with greed

At one Washington dinner where GWB was the main speaker, he made a joke of searching for Bin Ladin under tables and behind doors. Bin Ladin was never GWB's main goal, but rather the tool by which he could launch the NEOCONS preplanned agenda to war on Iraq and the middle east for greed and to satisfy Israel's need for security.

George W Bush damaged America, badly. The ghost of his administration lingers over the British Parliament who has refused to join the Obama coalition. After a dose of Bush 43, my Lord, please don't ever give America another nincompoop like W.

the global economic melt down was caused by laws that Clinton signed, which were far more costly to america's rep than were the excursions of frat boy Bush.

They were not aiding "you". They were trying to aid themselves and "you" were a handy convenience.



I wasn't irked in the least. France does not hold the position. France goes to considerable trouble to reduce and even eradicate US influence. It has, at GATT, resisted tempting economic inducements to let up on its restrictions on US movie and TV productions.



I would expect Americans to value the "Special Relationship" because it is a gambit in their own interests. It doesn't actually exist. So there is no question of it being good or bad. It only exists in the minds of those having an interest in it existing.

A common language is a tie that cannot be underestimated.

Our SR is with the Commonwealth. And to an increasing extent with Europe.

I thought Kerry's speech betrayed a marked feminine sensibility. A gushing transfer of love. Unstable by definition.

We have just witnessed proof that if we don't follow you we are demoted.

Try reading Wiki under "Modern History of Syria".

You are right, Hawk, thanks for the refresher course. I did a Google research on the global economic meltdown that was caused by laws that Clinton signed. "This was a direct result of Bill Clinton’s decision to not regulate derivatives. Sensible policy.....regulating derivatives, possible debts worth almost three times the size of the world’s economy when the decision to not regulate them was made .... would have prevented the crisis. But Clinton decided not to, causing a crisis that destroyed millions of peoples’ jobs, savings, and homes." The ironic part of all this is Clinton seem to be made of Teflon.....nothing bad seems to stick to him; today, he's more popular than ever.

What irks me more than anything is the way GWB came into power ....stealing the election....is unforgivable in my mind; GWB's presidency has been ranked among the worst in recent surveys of presidential scholars. One cannot dismiss this "frat boy" so easily as he made a gigantic mess in Iraq.

Good. Anybody who ever voted for Bork Obunga is not qualified to be voting.

I think the vehemence of the 2003 reaction against France was because Americans knew deep down that we were right, that it was a bad idea to go into Iraq. To listen to the very same idiotic US right preach pacificism and sanctimonuouly lecture us about "drawing the lessons from Iraq" is priceless.

W. had no happy options wrt Iraq after Saddam Hussein supplied the 9-11 jackers with anthrax: he could invade the place (he did) or nuke it.

The situation was set up by Chinagate and by Jamie Gorelick's "Gorelick Wall" which made 9/11 possible.

Geoge W. Bush's major failures were not in foreign policy; his failures were in refusing to recognize what the national demoKKKrats had become and in continuing to use the Texas model of treating demoKKKrats like another branch of the family while they treat everybody else like the enemy.

Big deal.... LOL

This is geopolitics, Spendi, it's not about love. Don't fall for the sugar coating.

Bullshit. You must be the only idiot who still believes this old bollocks.

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.

He had no WMDs.

There was no Al Qaida activity in Iraq, prior to the invasion. Thanks to Dubya, Al Qaida is all over the place.

That's precisely why Obama is attacking Assad: Saddam gave away all his WMD to Syria, who supplied sarin to Miley Cyrus...

Bullshit, people quite like Clinton. Bush is a pariah.

Everybody is entitled to opinions, Poop. NOBODY, including you, is entitled to his own facts or to any sort of a separate version of reality.


Saddam Hussein was provably involved in the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11. That means that George Bush had very few options unless you call letting somebody poison the US senate office building with anthrax and just skate an option, which is brain-dead. He could do what he did, which was try to take the high road, eliminate the Hussein regime, and try to construct a rational regime in Iraq both to prevent further attacks and to provide an example of rational government in the region, or he could have nuked the place.

Most people would probably want to try what W. did first.

Oh, yeah, I know, most of you guys don't believe Hussein had anything to do with 9-11 or the anthrax attacks which followed...


The first case of anthrax after 9-11 (Bob Stevens) showed up about ten miles from where Mohammed Atta himself had been living, i.e. the short drive from Coral Springs to Boca Raton.

The last previous case of anthrax in a human in the United States prior to 9-11 had been about 30 years prior to that.

There are other coincidences. For instance, the wife of the editor of the sun (where Stevens worked) also had contact with the hijackers in that she rented them the place they stayed.

Atta and the hijackers flew planes out of an airport in the vicinity and asked about crop dusters on more than one occasion. Indeed, Atta sought a loan to try to buy and and modify a crop duster.

Atta and several of the hijackers in this group also sought medical aid just prior to 9/11 for skin lesions that the doctors who saw them now say looked like anthrax lesions.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-24/news/0203240066_1_dr-christos-tsonas-cutaneous-anthrax-hijackers

Basically, you either believe in the laws of probability or you don't. Anybody claiming that all these things were coincidences is either totally in denial or does not believe in modern mathematics and probability theory.

While the anthrax in question originally came from a US strain, it isn't too surprising that Iraq might have that strain since that strain was mailed to laboratories around the world years earlier. That is, it wsa mailed out for the purpose of allowing other nations to develop medicines to cure it, not to make weapons out of it...

Nonetheless, it was highly sophisticated, and went through envelope paper as if it weren't even there; many thought it to be not only beyond the capabilities of Hussein but of anybody else on the planet as well including us. Nonetheless, later information showed Husseins programs to be capable of such feats:


http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html





Basically, the anthrax attack which followed 9/11 had Saddam Hussein's fingerprints all over it. It was particalized so finely it went right through envelop paper and yet was not weaponized (not hardened against antibiotics). It was basically a warning, saying as much as:




There is no way an American who had had anything to do with that would not be behind bars by now. In fact the one American they originally suspected told investigators that if he'd had anything to do with that stuff, he would either have anthrax or have the antibodies from the preventive medicine in his blood and offered to take a blood test on the spot. That of course was unanswerable.


The basic American notion of a presumption of innocence is not meaningful or useful in cases like that of Saddam Hussein. Even the Japanese had the decency to have their own markings on their aircraft at Pearl Harbor; Nobody had to guess who did it. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, is like the kid in school who was always standing around snickering when things went bad, but who could never be shown to have had a hand in anything directly. At some point, guys would start to kick that guy's ass periodically on general principles. Likewise, in the case of Saddam Hussein, the reasonable assumption is that he's guilty unless he somehow or other manages to prove himself innocent and, obviously, that did not happen.


At the time, the US military was in such disarray from the eight years of the Clinton regime that there was nothing we could do about it. Even such basic items as machinegun barrels, which we should have warehouses full of, were simply not there. Nonetheless, nobody should think they would get away with such a thing and, apparently, Hussein and his baathists didn't.

Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" documents some of this:



I mean, we didn't even have fricking machinegun barrels anymore. A friend of mine called up several barrelmakers about a barrel for a target rifle in the early spring of 02 and was told they were working 24/7 making machinegun barrels and didn't have time for any sort of civiliam firearm business.

A country with any sort of a military at all has to have warehouses full of that sort of thing and we had ******* none. We basically needed to go into Iraq the day after 9-11 and we were not able to due to the state Slick KKKlinton had left the military in, it took two years of building.


In the case of nuclear weaponry there appears to have been a three-way deal between Saddam Hussein, North Korea, and Libya in which raw materials from NK ended up in Libya to be transmogrified into missiles pointed at Europe and America by Saddam Hussein's technical people and with Iraqi financial backing (your oil-for-terrorism dollars at work), while Kofi Annan and his highly intelligent and efficient staff kept the west believing that their interests were being protected:



Muammar Khadaffi has since given the **** up and renounced the whole business.

The Czech government is sticking with its story of Mohammed Atta having met with one of Saddam Hussein's top spies prior to 9-11 and there are even pictures of the two together on the internet now:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/539dozfr.asp

Then again as I mentioned, there's the question of the anthrax attack which followed 9-11. Saddam Hussein's the only person on this planet who ever had that kind of weaponized anthraxs powder.

http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2004/01/01.html

Moreover it does not take hundreds of tons of anthrax powder to create havoc.

The sum total which was used was a few teaspoons full. In other words, a lifetime supply of that sort of thing for a guy like Saddam Hussein could easily amount to a hundred pounds worth, and I guarantee that I could hide that in a country the size of Iraq so that it would not be found.

The question of whether or not Hussein had 1000 tons of anthrax powder is simply the wrong question. The right questions are, did the guy have the motive, the technical resources, the financial wherewithal, the facilities, and the intel apparatus to play that sort of game, and the answers to all of those questions are obvious.

It's not an opinion, it is a fact. The only people who believe otherwise are said pathetic conspiracy freaks who believe the Biblical flood really happened and that Peruvians flew about on Pterodactyls. Stupid people.

I just documented my own case; all you've got is hate and rhetoric.

No, all you've got is bullshit websites that nobody takes seriously. You're the little Nazi spreading hate and ignorance.

Following the 43rd administration, GWB, any regime would appear respected and above board; however, I think we do President Obama a disservice, but then again, that is only my opinion. He has brought America's poor and middle class, the Affordable Health Care Insurance. That means where once someone with a pre-existent health condition could not get insurance, now they can. The price of medicine has been reduced and even some people have gotten rebates from insurance companies that had charged too much.

The Affordable Health Care, a landmark precedent-setting bill which is now the law of the land in the US is President Obama's major achievement and his legacy. It has been extremely difficult for this particular president to live up to his full potential because at the genesis of his first term and persisting into his second term, the partisan/racist Republicans met together on Obama's Inauguration Night to swear they would block everything he tried to do and everything he was for they would be against, even at the expense of a failed economy, even if the American people were hurt....They refused to sign a jobs bill for infrastructure etc. The Minority Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, said his main priority was to make sure Obama served only one term...the American people elected the black president the second time with a decisive win.

For the most part Obama has improved our relationship abroad, more so there than here, but he has been a president for the middle class people. Barack Obama is not perfect, and personally between you, me and the lamppost, I don't know an individual who is.....I am a confirmed atheist.

The US presidency is a lonely one. No matter what he does he will be criticized and in some quarters just plain hated.

I remember when I was on holiday in Mexico, all the Americans queuing up to buy large quantities of prescription medicine. I'm so glad we've got the NHS.