China & Russia Deny Kerry's Syrian Chemical Claims

They believe it could be either side. Deja Vu? Another administration leading us into war on trumped up WMD evidence?

Ok I'll bite. Come on, they have to do something. After all there have been many lines drawn. Besides it is a good diversion from that Benghazi thingy. The admin better think fast though as the stock market is plunging.

Mentioning previous intel on what happened to Iraq's WMDs, one of the popular theories was that it a lot of it went to Syria. Russia has an interest in Syria and they have multiple contracts for various pieces of hardware, mostly dual purpose items that can be used for civilian and military reasons. In the meanwhile Syria is one of few places in the Med that the Russian Navy is welcome and probably the only place that Russia would be allowed to amass any kind of military presence. Proxy war between the US and Russia? I guess we'll have to wait and see...

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Any offensive military action taken by the United States must be explicitly authorized by Congress.

Plain and simple.

It may be plain and simple but I have to wonder how it is going to be classified to be viewed as a threat to the nation to do an end around congress.

Since going the the U.N. isn't a viable option it will be through NATO?

WindPeak wrote: Ok I'll bite. Come on, they have to do something. After all there have been many lines drawn. Besides it is a good diversion from that Benghazi thingy. The admin better think fast though as the stock market is plunging.

I think the big mistake was Obama making the red line threat in the first place. He should have just stayed quiet.
Instead, we have the current situation:
1) Supplying Al Quaida in Syria with weapons.
2) Having to spend millions with punitive strikes on Assad's military and possibly Russian technicians and military assets, possibly creating a major diplomatic crisis.
3) Not achieving much with those strikes. We can't actually attack chemical weapon stores because we don't want to release them into the enviroment.

Obama let his mouth make threats he wasn't willing to actually carry out. And America isn't willing to put boots on the ground in another Arab country. Per Drudge only 9% of Americans support American military intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

Has anybody asked Jordan, Israel or Turkey what they are willing to do about this? Hell, it's their back yard...

Great question. Especially when Jordan, Turkey, & Lebanon have large populations of Syrian refugees. And Syria has threatened to attack Israel if NATO targets them.

I am starting to worry that this could become a dominos scenario throughout the Mideast. Egypt threw out the Islamists, Tunisia is trying to throwout their Islamists, Turkey just arrested many of their top military for planning a coup against the current Islamic goverment. This region is very unstable right now. And now we have Russia and NATO beating their chests.

The president said he had not taken a final decision on air strikes but Syria needed to understand there were "international consequences" for its actions. "If in fact we make a choice to have repercussions for the use of chemical weapons, then the Assad regime will have received a pretty strong signal that in fact it had better not do it again," Obama told PBS.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/a ... me-british

"Better not do it again?"

Who the F does this idiot think he's talking to... his kids?

Team America: And if they do this again, we will send them a strongly worded letter.