What should be done about Syria?

[Barry]

It's easy enough to say that we shouldn't bomb Syria because of... well... alot of reasons! However, I think the impetus springs from a valid question:

How should the world react to discourage future use of chemical weapons?

Physical punishment, ie bombing in this case, is the default reaction. Arming the rebels is just another version of that. What's a more inspired/enlightened reaction? Do you really think it would be more effective? What if it's less effective (let's just say that it is for argument's sake), is it still more enlightened and moral? Does the USA have responsibility to do something, even if the UN doesn't/can't go along?

Just now (after I wrote the text above) I read an opinion piece on the New York Time ( The Right Questions on Syria) that more or less asks the same question. However, like almost all discussion on the topic, it wanders from the essential question of the issue (per Obama) which is: how to deter the future use of chemical weapons. It's not about what we want to see happen in Syria and how to make that happen, though Obama may get pushed into that by McCain and Co, in order to get the resolution passed.

Another NYT columnist thinks we should arm the rebels and shame the regime. I like the shame part, but the arm part is very troubling. Is shame enough?

So what you do if you were in Obama's shoes?

[dzerach]

Good luck to anyone who can bushwhack their way through all of the national and international backstage racketeering and political complexities to fully validate what is in fact going on; the complete picture? Humanitarian would not be the motivation should the U.S take action. Let's get that one straight at least. The A-mericans and the A-rabs? I'm sure there is no contradiction in the fact that U.S used chemical weapons in Vietnam, that Union Carbide in Bhopal was "not guilty" -- nor Roosevelt's turning away of ships of Jews fleeing Nazi Europe. I believe Kerry exactly as far as I could pick up and throw the guy and his pink tie, something I would never do, btw, NSA.

How should the world react to discourage future use of chemical weapons?

[Karin Lease]

What about talking to all stakeholders?
If I think my neighbor does something immoral, should the first thing I do be to lob a grenade over his fence?
Don't the rules of a civil society apply on all levels?
I'm tired of being associated with the bully...the US government.
wildflower

How should the world react to discourage future use of chemical weapons?

[phredo]

So what you do if you were in Obama's shoes?

Close all "our" military bases overseas, make the CIA a purely information gathering agency or close it entirely (JFK said, "I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds"), and try to practice harmlessness. Certainly the USA is the very last nation that has anything to teach others as regards humanity.

[arthunter]

Step up humanitarian aid and stay out of it ... the whole world sees us as terrorists for our "intervention" and only 13% of Americans are wanting involvement ... plus, our military budget is already destroying humanitarian aid in our own country where many, many people are suffering ...

https://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/201...blessness?lite

This, posted today, should be our only concern ... these people will need help ....

"Two million Syrians have now fled their homeland and more than 4 million are displaced internally, according to theUnited Nations. Combined, that's more than a quarter of the country's 23 million people. This is placing tremendous strain on neighboring states like Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon."

The whole chemical weapons excuse, if true, is kind of strange for a country like ours with a history of chemical warfare ...

https://www.infowars.com/10-chemical...to-talk-about/

[dzerach]

New poll of Americans asks this same question.

https://www.theonion.com/articles/po...ng-cong,33752/

"Sooner rather than later, too," Mill added. “This war isn’t going to last forever.”

(At left side of webpage can be found more links to Syria-related articles and thoughtful commentary from this same reputable news source.)

[jbox]

So what you do if you were in Obama's shoes?

How about abolishing the state department (or at least dumping 90% of its budget), bringing home all our troops and closing the dozens and dozens of military bases across the globe, and minding our own business and letting other countries mind their own business. The Syrians seem to have a fine little civil war going and Assad's days are obviously numbered. Who will win? Are we supposed to support them? Remember Egypt? If the Taliban have maneuvered themselves in charge in Afghanistan, who are we to change that?

Let the Afghans make their own destiny. Most of the time we stick our nose into other countries internal affairs on the behest of American corporations. Doing business around the globe is fine, just don't depend on the US military to make it happen. Why not save ourselves the grief and just mind our own business. America should be admired, not hated. Imagine if all the money we spent on bullshit wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was spent domestically. Under which scenario do you think we are better off? Another question: Why was the UN founded? Answer: To decide whether to intervene in the Syrian situation and others like it. Where is the UN? In the corner wringing their hands as usual while the USA decides how to respond now that nobody is standing with us.

[occihoff]

As a person who is ordinarily a "knee-jerk pacifist," I have to say that in this case I'm not so sure we should just let the Syrian opposition doggedly slug it out, month after month, taking appalling casualties, while the Assad air force and massive artillery rain indiscriminate havoc on fighters and civilians alike.

It seems to me that the least we could do is incapacitate the air force, so as to give the opposition more of a fighting chance, just as was done successfully in Libya. While I agree with the oft-cited statement that the opposition is comprised of a motley variety of groups, some of which have goals that we might not entirely approve of, and that there are no good solutions to the crisis, I think that one thing is clear: the Assad regime is so rotten and destructive that it must not be allowed to get away with the calamity it has wrought, and in this case the solutions currently proposed by pacifist organizations--mainly "further negotiations"--are miserably unrealistic and inadequate.

[Alex]

It's easy enough to say that we shouldn't bomb Syria because of... well... alot of reasons! However, I think the impetus springs from a valid question:

How should the world react to discourage future use of chemical weapons?

Physical punishment, ie bombing in this case, is the default reaction. Arming the rebels is just another version of that. What's a more inspired/enlightened reaction?.......

Yes, the American way - justify killing innocent people in retaliation for someone else killing innocent people. Boy is the world a better place after the millions of peasants we killed in Iraq and Vietnam.

To me, the awakened first step is to question the data of who supposedly did what in the first place.

Who is claiming who created this chemical attack, if there was one at all or what the extent really was. And who is hiding who supplied the chemicals?
US GOVT. CONTROLLED MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

I nearly threw up at the endless scripted sentences when they first tried to sell this. Who has written the news copy "it looks inevitable", "we have an obligation', "our need to retaliate is looking unavoidable" "childrenchildrenchildrenchildren..."
US GOVT. CONTROLLED MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Who now has over and over and over amassed an extensive list of lies and deadly, innocent-killing false flag operations as a means to garnish public support for military actions ultimately having ZERO to do with doing the right thing for any right reason?
US GOVERNMENT

[jbox]

As a person who is ordinarily a "knee-jerk pacifist," I have to say that in this case I'm not so sure we should just let the Syrian opposition doggedly slug it out, month after month, taking appalling casualties, while the Assad air force and massive artillery rain indiscriminate havoc on fighters and civilians alike.

It seems to me that the least we could do is incapacitate the air force, so as to give the opposition more of a fighting chance, just as was done successfully in Libya. While I agree with the oft-cited statement that the opposition is comprised of a motley variety of groups, some of which have goals that we might not entirely approve of, and that there are no good solutions to the crisis, I think that one thing is clear: the Assad regime is so rotten and destructive that it must not be allowed to get away with the calamity it has wrought, and in this case the solutions currently proposed by pacifist organizations--mainly "further negotiations"--are miserably unrealistic and inadequate.

Richard,

As someone who is more inclined to agree with you than not, I am puzzled by your willingness to get involved in yet another Mideast adventure. Do you think we should bomb the Syrian Air Force because we are so morally superior? Or perhaps just because we can do it if we want? If the Syrian regime is so rotten it will inevitably be replaced, which the opposition seems to be doing a credible job of. I see it as the height of presumptuousness to decide to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. Such arrogance has cost the USA dearly in terms of international prestige, monetary cost, and the lives of our serviceman and women. The UN stands on the sidelines tut-tutting, our allies aren't buying in, we need to quit getting into regional conflicts where everyone hates us. The only way I would support a deployment is, as the Onion has reported, to deploy all 535 members of Congress there.

[handy]

Succinct. There's always hope...

What Do Americans Know That Their Government Doesn’t Know?

Michael S. Rozeff at 10:32 am EDT on September 08, 2013

Americans have turned against war in the case of bombing Syria. This is described superficially as war-weariness. But why be weary of the last 15 years of war?
Taking them at their most idealistic, government officials, spurred on by a neocon world-view, have launched these attacks, bombings and wars for the sake of uplifting other nations out of dictatorships and into democracies. Justice and progress have been the promise and the dream, to be attained on a revolutionary worldwide path. Congress and the Executive have imagined themselves as the propagators and enforcers of a new order, a higher moral political order of democracies in countries lacking them.
But since morality and social order cannot be imposed by foreign attacks and aggressive wars to alter governments and entire societies, what these American intrusions have caused is death and destruction in one country after another, plus hatred and revenge visited upon the invaders.
What Americans now recognize, if only by gut instinct, is that the war policy has backfired. The global war on terror has backfired. Interventionism has backfired. America has done wrong, morally and pragmatically.
Americans are coming to recognize this while their leaders are still caught up in their false notions that power and their power in particular can remake the world for the better.

Contact Michael S. Rozeff

[occihoff]

I'm very sympathetic with all these anti-intervention views, and I don't fancy myself an expert in the mysterious, arcane world of international insanity, exploitation, and mayhem. But I'm concerned that on the one hand we have Russia giving copious military aid to the Assad regime, and standing staunchly with only China on the Security Council to block any strong UN action. And on the other hand we have war- weary nations who just don't have much energy for getting into another embranglment, further enervated by anti-war activists and citizens who seem to see every military effort as a cynical and futile venture analogous to the US intervention in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Meanwhile it appears that the Syrian opposition forces are just hanging on by a thread while they and the Syrian people are being decimated by massive government artillery and a huge air force, which the opposition does not have.

What if Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are the wrong analogy? What if the situation in Syria is more analogous to the situation in Serbia or Ruwanda? In Serbia, if I'm not mistaken, foreign intervention was indispensable and made the situation much better. In Ruwanda, ex-President Clinton and many other leaders are wringing their hands over what they now see as their failure to step in to prevent horrific massacres.

Obviously my inclination to bomb the Syrian air force has nothing to do with moral superiority or just doing it because we can do it if we want. I don't know why you chose such ridiculous motives to ask me about. My motive is clearly to help the underdogs, even though the underdogs are not entirely comprised of wonderful people whom I would like to see take over the country. You say the Syrian regime is so rotten it will inevitably be replaced. That's not how the situation sounds to me. To me it sounds more likely that, in the absence of intervention by foreign air forces, the Syrian air force, aided by Russia, will just continue bombing and blasting the cities to smithereens until the opposition has no further traction.

Richard,

As someone who is more inclined to agree with you than not, I am puzzled by your willingness to get involved in yet another Mideast adventure. Do you think we should bomb the Syrian Air Force because we are so morally superior? Or perhaps just because we can do it if we want? If the Syrian regime is so rotten it will inevitably be replaced, which the opposition seems to be doing a credible job of. I see it as the height of presumptuousness to decide to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. Such arrogance has cost the USA dearly in terms of international prestige, monetary cost, and the lives of our serviceman and women. The UN stands on the sidelines tut-tutting, our allies aren't buying in, we need to quit getting into regional conflicts where everyone hates us. The only way I would support a deployment is, as the Onion has reported, to deploy all 535 members of Congress there.

[dzerach]

...the mysterious, arcane world of international insanity, exploitation, and mayhem...

WELL SAID!

I would re-submit "backstage racketeering" and perhaps domestic apathy or domestic procrastination or deep denial.

Whichever country goes to war or tortures others just to "make a statement" is simply lacking in skills. Curious to know if anyone can recall a timeframe during your lifetime when your country was not at war? I can't. I'm sure I'm missing a few memories. ...hmm perhaps some of you who were alive for a few years in the late forties can recall?

Name a time when US military intervention "fixed" or could fix anything? Further, I live in a modernized and MENTALLY, EMOTIONALLY barbaric country. I'm glad you live in one that can solve these kinds of advanced nation-building, human and cultural attitudes/problems by blowing stuff up ETC., or through compassion or objectivity or the scientific method or technology, which I'm sure someone will get on wacco and proclaim.

What if Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are the wrong analogy? What if the situation in Syria is more analogous to the situation in Serbia or Ruwanda?

[handy]

I'm very sympathetic with all these anti-intervention views, and I don't fancy myself an expert in the mysterious, arcane world of international insanity, exploitation, and mayhem. But I'm concerned that on the one hand we have Russia giving copious military aid to the Assad regime, and standing staunchly with only China on the Security Council to block any strong UN action.

Russia's only Mediterranean naval base is at Tartus, Syria. They ARE going to protect their interest there. The delivery of weaponry contracted and paid for years ago is hardly "copious".

China has spent a lot of money there on pipelines and access to resources. They are working at being good businessmen. Attempts by the USGov to wrest control through military force WILL piss them off. And if they decide to refuse to buy any more of our debt, or even to cut their losses and dump the fednotes they hold onto the world market, our economy will be royally screwed without a shot being fired. We're broke; they're not.

And on the other hand we have war- weary nations who just don't have much energy for getting into another embranglment, further enervated by anti-war activists and citizens who seem to see every military effort as a cynical and futile venture analogous to the US intervention in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Well! It's about damn time!

Meanwhile it appears that the Syrian opposition forces are just hanging on by a thread while they and the Syrian people are being decimated by massive government artillery and a huge air force, which the opposition does not have.

They are not "Syrian opposition forces". They are mercenary and Al CIAda thugs paid and armed by the USGov. The Syrian government response to USGov-Saudi-Israeli sponsored terrorism has been surprisingly restrained. Of the 100,000± killed so far, approx. 45,000 have been Syrian military, and more than half of the civilians killed have been at the hands of the "opposition". For a trained opthalmologist, roped into a presidency he didn't desire, by a dying father, Assad seems to be doing a pretty competent job. Personally, I hope he wins.

What if Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are the wrong analogy?

They're not. USGov meddling.

What if the situation in Syria is more analogous to the situation in Serbia or Ruwanda?

No difference; more USGov meddling.

In Serbia, if I'm not mistaken, foreign intervention was indispensable and made the situation much better. In Ruwanda, ex-President Clinton and many other leaders are wringing their hands over what they now see as their failure to step in to prevent horrific massacres.

You are mistaken. Ask all the people of Kosovo (well, I guess you can't; they're dead) that Clinton slaughtered, if they're better off.

Obviously my inclination to bomb the Syrian air force has nothing to do with moral superiority...

I call utter BULLSHIT! This is precisely the kind of passive-aggressive Immoral holier-than-thou-but-trying-to-deny-it excuse/justification power hungry war-mongers have used in EVERY meddlesome murderous adventure since World War II.

What you're saying is that you approve of more murder and more slaughter, as long as it's YOUR guy doing it, and of course, YOU don't actually have to pick up a rifle and go do it yourself.

[handy]

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” –Mahatma Gandhi

[handy]

This guy seems better qualified to have an opinion on the situation than any of us on wacco. 'Course, that's just my opinion.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/09/...or-warmongers/
Obama, Syria, and Interventionism: Ten Questions Worth Pondering

By Michael Scheuer
September 11, 2013

–1.) Question: Is it justifiable for America to go to war in Syria to get President Obama out of the box he created for himself by talking about a “red line” in the Syrian civil war, a conflict in which no genuine U.S. national interests are at risk?

–Answer: No. Obama’s inexperience in foreign affairs and his seeming personal arrogance got him — and America — into this mess, and so little a man is he that he now refuses to accept responsibility for foolishly drawing the red line, instead blaming it on “the world.” Let him swing.

–2.) Question: Will America’s credibility as a great military power be denigrated if it does not attack Syria?

–Answer: No. We have already lost most of that credibility because Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama, and their generals waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq they did not intend to win. The wanton waste of American military lives and money by these men, and their willingness to admit defeat to men armed with weapons from the Korean war, have largely destroyed America’s military credibility among allies and foes alike. Compared to failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, a failure to attack Syria is small potatoes.

–3.) Question: Is it unacceptable for one side in a civil war — as in Syria — to use every weapon it needs to try to ensure its survival against an enemy who started the civil war and whose military power is supplied by the Islamist fighters who are at war with America and the West? In other words, must the legitimate government of Syria — which we and all the world recognized before the Syrian opposition started the civil war — commit suicide rather than defend itself and prevent the slaughter of Syria’s million-strong Alawite community?

–Answer: No. The right to self-defense is the first law of nature and the Asaad government has as much right to exercise it as does — as Washington always and correctly insists to be the case — the Israeli government.

–4.) Question: Is it acceptable for the great majority of Americans — who polls show are opposed to a Syrian war — to be ignored by both houses of Congress because they cannot offer the same slate of enticements that are available to their elected representatives from pro-Israel U.S. citizens and organizations, as well as from the Saudi and other Gulf regimes and their subordinates in the lobbies of the U.S. oil and arms-making industries?

–Answer: No. Unless, of course, our country exists only to supply money and cannon fodder for attaining the foreign policy goals of Israel, the Saudis, and other Gulf tyrants while they stand safely on the sidelines.

–5.) Question: Do American parents whose soldier-children were killed or maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq deserve to have their and their children’s sacrifice made a mockery of by having U.S. military forces ally themselves with and try to deliver victory to the same mujahedin who killed and maimed their offspring? Do the families of those killed and maimed on 9/11 merit the same treatment?

–Answer: No.

–6.) Question: Is it acceptable for Congress to fail to demand that the Executive Branch publicly explain to the American people the domestic threat that is posed by the substantial terrorist capability that Iran and Lebanese Hizballah have built inside the United States, a capability resulting from open borders and bipartisan political correctness, and one that could be activated if U.S. forces attack Syria?

–Answer: No. If honest, such a briefing from the Executive Branch would make every American aware that border-control is a key national-defense requirement, as well as demonstrate to them how negligent both parties have been for decades in regard to their responsibility to protect the country by controlling its borders.

–7.) Question: Does it make sense for Obama to undertake military action against Syria — which poses no threat to the United States — when he refused to use the U.S. military to try to save the lives of the Americans in Benghazi whom he and his lieutenants were watching on live video being attacked and finally killed?

–Answer: No.

–8.) Question: Would a decent man, respectful of the electorate’s wishes, distribute videos of the gas attacks in Syria in attempt to shame Americans into supporting his unnecessary war?

–Answer: No. But Obama consistently has shown that he, his party, and their media accomplices will exploit the deaths of others — take the shootings in Colorado and Connecticut — to try to achieve their ideological goals, such as negating the 2^nd Amendment.

–9.) Question: Should the Congress and media continue to allow Obama to use his politically well-calculated ardor for an unnecessary war to distract Americans from his administration’s scandals, such as IRS attacks on Conservative groups and his administration’s expansion of NSA programs that have all but shredded the 4^th Amendment?

–Answer: No.

–10.) Question: Given polling data that shows an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose an offensive war against the Syria regime, will the interventionists in both political parties begin to see that Americans are sick to death of both the unnecessary wars they start — such as Libya and Iraq — and the necessary wars they undertake but do not intend to win, such as Afghanistan? Will they begin to see what their constituents clearly see, that all unnecessary wars inevitably undermine the nation’s liberties, its economic prosperity, and its social and political cohesion?

–Answer: No. As Secretary of State Kerry said this weekend, the bipartisan interventionists who want an offensive war against Syria are “humane and decent” people who — by implication — are much smarter and more moral persons than the people who elect and pay them, and whose children will die in their wars.

Michael Scheuer [send him mail] is the author of Imperial Hubris, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq and the biography Osama bin Laden. He recently resigned after 22 years at the CIA. He served as chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit.
Copyright 2013 © Michael Scheuer

[jbox]

This Scheuer fellow may be qualified to have an opinion but so are you and so am I. Better qualified, maybe, maybe not, but my opinion of him is that he is a right wing hack. I bet you see him from time to time on Fox News.

This guy seems better qualified to have an opinion on the situation than any of us on wacco. 'Course, that's just my opinion.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/09/...or-warmongers/
Obama, Syria, and Interventionism: Ten Questions Worth Pondering

By Michael Scheuer

[handy]

This Scheuer fellow may be qualified to have an opinion but so are you and so am I. Better qualified, maybe, maybe not, but my opinion of him is that he is a right wing hack. I bet you see him from time to time on Fox News.

Michael Scheuer had 22 years in the CIA before quitting in disgust. He blew off a lucrative pension to regain his personal sense of honor, integrity and principle. So, yes, his street cred is considerably greater than yours (or mine). Given his experiences, his opinion is likely to be more accurate than yours or mine.

In some of your previous writings, I have seen you make some liberty-minded statements that I found hopeful. But when, by the second sentence in a paragraph of only three statements, you resort to name-calling (right wing hack), you only harm your own credibility. Oh, well...

I do Not watch (or trust) Fox News. I also ignore CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc.
So you lose that bet, even though you conveniently failed to put any money where your mouth is.

[podfish]

I especially liked his quote:

Answer: No. Obama’s inexperience in foreign affairs and his seeming personal arrogance got him — and America — into this mess, and so little a man is he that he now refuses to accept responsibility for foolishly drawing the red line, instead blaming it on “the world.” Let him swing.

truly a sign he's trying to explain and convince people who may see it differently than he does.

Michael Scheuer had 22 years in the CIA before quitting in disgust. He blew off a lucrative pension to regain his personal sense of honor, integrity and principle. So, yes, his street cred is considerably greater than yours (or mine). Given his experiences, his opinion is likely to be more accurate than yours or mine.

that may or may not be true. His opinion about what? I bet he knows a lot more about whatever his CIA specialty was than any of us do, but that could be anything. Maybe he's awesome at interpreting farm reports from the Congo. There's an incredible number of waccos (our kind and other kinds) who have a vastly inflated and misplaced sense of their personal honor. Some people feel challenges to their right to own a red stapler, or to their right to be deferred to by their inferiors, should be considered matters of honor. On Haidt's spectrum of values, these characteristics do indeed correlate with those who value order, purity, and respect for authority - and are typically found on people who are politically conservative. Liberals are less impressed - their ranking of moral values is different (notably, respect for authority is lower). So I think the right-wing part is justified. Whether he's a hack, I have no opinion.

But really, each item in his list takes for granted the truth of some kind of assertion (e.g. "We have .. lost most of that credibility because [.. several people..] waged wars .. they did not intend to win"). If you see the world the way he does, it's satisfying to hear him frame things that way. But if you think, as I do, that these positions define an ideology rather than a dispassionate evaluation, then this is just a rant.

Do American parents whose soldier-children were killed or maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq deserve to have their and their children’s sacrifice made a mockery of?

sure, like reasonable people disagree over that. He's sold me right there! anything he says just gotta be true or kittens and patriots will die!

[handy]

I especially liked his quote:

truly a sign he's trying to explain and convince people who may see it differently than he does.

that may or may not be true. His opinion about what? I bet he knows a lot more about whatever his CIA specialty was than any of us do, but that could be anything. Maybe he's awesome at interpreting farm reports from the Congo.

Minimal effort on your part with any search engine would inform you that he was the head of the Osama bin Laden unit. He quit when he was repeatedly stonewalled by the Cheney-Feith-Wolfowitz cabal of warmongers.

There's an incredible number of waccos (our kind and other kinds) who have a vastly inflated and misplaced sense of their personal honor. Some people feel challenges to their right to own a red stapler, or to their right to be deferred to by their inferiors, should be considered matters of honor.

"Some people"? Thought we were talking about Mr. Scheuer. Ah well, if you got nothing, change the subject.

On Haidt's spectrum of values, these characteristics do indeed correlate with those who value order, purity, and respect for authority - and are typically found on people who are politically conservative. Liberals are less impressed - their ranking of moral values is different (notably, respect for authority is lower). So I think the right-wing part is justified. Whether he's a hack, I have no opinion.

Liberal have moral values?!! Damn! Learn something new every day! As far as respect for authority being lower, it seems to me that liberal respect for Obama is every bit as sick as conservative respect for Bush. Note the silence of the anti-war movement since Obama.

Given the intellectual laziness, name calling, denigration and sarcasm that attempts to pass for reasoned discussion in this thread, I probably won't bother to respond much more, but, carry on, enjoy...

Best regards,

[podfish]

Given the intellectual laziness, name calling, denigration and sarcasm that attempts to pass for reasoned discussion in this thread, I probably won't bother to respond much more, but, carry on, enjoy...

yeah, I think Mr. Scheuer set the bar for name calling, denigration and sarcasm pretty high. Sorry I couldn't rise that far, but at least I can challenge his intellectual laziness.

[handy]

yeah, I think Mr. Scheuer set the bar for name calling, denigration and sarcasm pretty high. Sorry I couldn't rise that far, but at least I can challenge his intellectual laziness.

Okay, now you're just trolling. I had hoped for better. Sorry my optimism isn't justified.

[occihoff]

Minimal effort on your part with any search engine would inform you that he was the head of the Osama bin Laden unit. He quit when he was repeatedly stonewalled by the Cheney-Feith-Wolfowitz cabal of warmongers.


"Some people"? Thought we were talking about Mr. Scheuer. Ah well, if you got nothing, change the subject.



Liberal have moral values?!! Damn! Learn something new every day! As far as respect for authority being lower, it seems to me that liberal respect for Obama is every bit as sick as conservative respect for Bush. Note the silence of the anti-war movement since Obama.

Given the intellectual laziness, name calling, denigration and sarcasm that attempts to pass for reasoned discussion in this thread, I probably won't bother to respond much more, but, carry on, enjoy...

Best regards,

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!