WELCOME TO OPINIONS BASED ON FACTS (OBOF)
&
THINGS YOU
MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)
YEAR THREE
Name
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Published
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OVERVIEW
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 14
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Dec 18, 2012
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 15
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Jan. 02, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 16
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Jan. 08, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 16
EXTRA
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Jan. 11, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 17
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Jan. 15, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 18
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Jan. 22, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 19
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Jan. 29, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 20
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Feb. 05, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 21
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Feb. 14, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 22
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Feb. 20, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 23
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Feb. 27, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 23 SPECIAL
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Mar. 06, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 24
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Mar. 07, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 25
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Mar. 12, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 25-EXTRA
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Mar. 14, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 26
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Mar. 19, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 27
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Mar. 26, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 28
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Apr. 02, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 29
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Apr. 08, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 30
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Apr. 17, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 31
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Apr. 23, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 32
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Apr. 30, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 33
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May 07, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 34
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May 18, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 35
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May 21, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 36
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May 30, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 37
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June
05, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 38
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June
11, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 39
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June
18, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 40
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June
25, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 41
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July
02, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 42
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July
09, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 43
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July
16, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 44
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July
23, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 45
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July 30, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 46
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Aug.
06, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 47
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Aug.
14, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 48
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Aug. 20, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 49
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Aug. 27, 2013
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OBOF & TYMHM PART 50
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Sept. 05, 2013
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IN THIS ISSUE
1. My own commentary.
2. Where Labor Day came from and where
is it going.
3. Obama's political capital and the slippery
slope of Syria .
4. The White House walk & talk that changed
Obama's mind on Syria .
5. Obama should reveal secret Syria
intercepts.
6. Seizure of hundreds of dogs in multi-state
organized dog fighting raid.
A
LITTLE OF MY OWN
COMMENTARY.
By Floyd Bowman
Publisher "Opinions Based
On Facts."
September 5, 2013
Labor Day is
over and I wonder what it meant to you?
I am sure it meant different things to different people. The first article in this issue is very
interesting in trying to answer that question.
It doesn't get specific about our individual problems as a country or
person, but it does give you something to reflect on as individuals. I
think you will find it worth you time.
NOW, the
following articles are some of the best I have come across for some time, that
sets up where we are today, both with what is ahead of us in our country and
various thoughts about our country's position relating to Syria . I am sure you have all heard something lately
about Syria
so I'll not get into that as these articles give you plenty to think about.
I am going to say
however, that based on what facts I can obtain, it is very difficult for us, as
a country, to set aside and watch people, including children, put to death with
chemical weapons, if that is what is happening.
I have to admit, that after Iraq , I am still doubtful and one
of the articles below addresses this point.
At the same time, the U.S.
simply cannot police every dictator in the world, particularly when it is
looking more and more as though we may well be doing it alone, if we do
it.
To go into a
situation such as this with a plan of limited strikes is absolutely ridiculous. It won't be a limited strike and almost
everyone knows that. Past recent history
tells us that.
I am going to
give you a short prevue from Robert
Reich, author of our second article today, which just shows how ridiculous our
entering this Syrian mess is as it relates to other things our country faces.
President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious:
implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately
constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and
Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic
Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor,
rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong
recovery.
Now, add to that a big fight that will probably take place in the next two
to three weeks over getting enough money to keep this country running. WE SIMPLY HAVE TO START TAKING CARE OF U. S.
PROBLEMS AND REALIZE WE CAN'T SAVE THE WORLD.
The countries across the Atlantic have
been fighting and committing atrocities since the beginning of time.
Congress reconvenes on September 9th for a ridiculous 9 days. The Republicans are going to try hard to ambush
Obama so as to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. I hope he has something up his sleeve to
counteract their devious ways. There is
going to be some very important developments coming in the next few weeks and I
will try hard to keep you informed with articles that I feel give you the most
accurate picture I can find. I already
have some now, but it would simply make this posting too long and they will be
just as important next week as they are now.
~~~
Where
Labor Day Came from, and
Where
it’s Going
Jim Hightower
NationofChange
/ Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 1 September 2013
Webster’s dictionary tells us that Labor Day was “set
aside for special recognition of working people.”
That's nice, but “set aside” by whom? It certainly wasn’t the Wall Street corporate
and political powers that be. They
nearly swallowed their cigars when the idea of honoring labor’s importance to America ’s
economy and social well-being was first proposed in 1882. Rather, this holiday was created by the
workers themselves, requiring a 12-year grassroots struggle that finally
culminated with an act of Congress in 1894.
The campaign helped coalesce unions into a national
movement. And its message of labor's
essential role also countered the haughty insistence of the robber barons of
that time. The barons insisted they were America 's "makers" — the
invaluable few whose monopolistic pursuits should be unfettered. For they
claimed that they and their corporations were the God-ordained creators of
wealth.
Despite their bloated sense of self-importance, notice
that the American people do not celebrate a CEO Day. Indeed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, the real
makers are the many ground-level workers who actually do the making: "Labor is prior to and independent of
capital," Abe declared in his first state of the union address. "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and
could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior
of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Yet on Labor Day 2013,
robber barons are again ascendant, declaring that they owe nothing — not even a
shared prosperity — to the workers, consumers, taxpayers, and other American
people who sustain them. Quite the
opposite, they and their political henchmen are blithely shredding America 's
social contract and again insisting that the corporate elite must be
unfettered, unions eliminated, and middle-class jobs Wal-Marted.
This intentional hollowing
out of our middle class is not just ignorant, but also immoral
Yet today's establishment economists are asking: Why are
so many people so glum? The Great Recession
ended in 2009, they note, and even job creation is picking up. So come on
people — get happy!
Maybe Labor Day is a good time to clue them into one big
reality behind this so-called "recovery:" Most Americans haven't
recovered.
Not by a long shot. In June, median household income was still
$3,400 less than in 2007, when Wall Street's crash started the collapse of our
real economy.
Why are working people still so far down? Take a peek at those new jobs the economists
are hailing. They're really "jobettes,"
paying only poverty-level wages, with no benefits or upward mobility. In the
recession, about 60 percent of the jobs we lost were middle-wage positions,
paying approximately $14 to $21 an hour. Most of those jobs have not come back.
Instead, of the jobs created since the
recovery began, nearly six out of 10 are low-wage, paying less than $14 an
hour. A central fact of the new American economy is that working-class people
are increasingly unable to make a living from their jobs.
To grasp this widening inequity, befuddled economists
might bite into a burger or pizza. Seven
of the 12 biggest corporations that pay their workers the least are fast-food
giants. Yum! is one. It's a conglomerate that owns Pizza Hut, KFC,
and Taco Bell .
Workers don't find these chains so yummy; for pay averages $7.50 an hour, with
no health care, pensions, etc. In contrast, Yum!'s CEO hauls off about $20
million a year, even as even as he dispatches lobbyists to oppose any hike in
our nation's miserly minimum wage.
This is no way to run a business, an economy, or a
society. Fast-food giants are hugely
profitable. (Yum! quaffed down $1.3
billion in profits last year alone.) They
are more than able to pay living wages and decent benefits, as many local,
independently-owned fast-food businesses do. Deliberately and unnecessarily holding down an
entire workforce by funneling rightful wages into the coffers of a few
ultra-rich executives and big investors is shameful — and dangerous. After all, even a dog knows the difference
between being stumbled over ... and being kicked.
At last, workers are beginning to kick back. All across the country, broad coalitions of
religious leaders, unions, civil rights groups, community supporters, and
others are joining thousands of fast-food workers in a rolling series of
one-day strikes against particular chains, publicly shaming them for profiting
through gross exploitation of employees. As one Baptist church leader said of his
presence in these protests, "It's a matter of justice."
Yes — and that's what Labor Day has always been about.
~~~
Obama’s Political Capital
and the
Slippery Slope of Syria
Robert Reich
NationofChange
/ Op-Ed
Published: Wednesday 4 September 2013
Even if the President musters enough votes to strike Syria ,
at what political cost? Any president
has a limited amount of political capital to mobilize support for his agenda,
in Congress and, more fundamentally, with the American people. This is
especially true of a president in his second term of office. Which makes
President Obama’s campaign to strike Syria all the more mystifying.
President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious:
implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately
constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and
Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic
Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor,
rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong
recovery.
Time and again we have
seen domestic agendas succumb to military adventures abroad — both because the
military-industrial-congressional complex drains money that might otherwise be
used for domestic goals, and because the public’s attention is diverted from
urgent problems at home to exigencies elsewhere around the globe.
It would be one thing if a
strike on Syria was critical
to America ’s future, or even
the future of the Middle East . But it is not. In fact, a strike on Syria may well cause more havoc in that
tinder-box region of the world by unleashing still more hatred for America , the West, and for Israel , and
more recruits to terrorism. Strikes are never surgical; civilians are
inevitably killed. Moreover, the
anti-Assad forces have shown themselves to be every bit as ruthless as Assad,
with closer ties to terrorist networks.
Using chemical weapons against one’s own innocent
civilians is a crime against humanity, to be sure, but the United States cannot be the world’s
only policeman. The UN Security Council
won’t support us, we can’t muster NATO, Great
Britain and Germany will not join us.
Dictatorial regimes are doing horrendous things to their people in many places
around the world. It would be folly for us to believe we could stop it all.
Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, are now
arguing that a failure to act against Syria will embolden enemies of Israel
like Iran and Hezbollah, and send a signal to Iran that the United States would
tolerate the fielding of a nuclear device. This is almost the same sort of
specious argument — America’s credibility at stake, and if we don’t act we
embolden our enemies and the enemies of our allies — used by George W. Bush to
justify toppling Saddam Hussein, and, decades before that, by Lyndon Johnson to
justify a tragic war in Vietnam.
It has proven to be a slippery slope: Once we take
military action, any subsequent failure to follow up or prevent gains by the
other side is seen as an even larger sign of our weakness, further emboldening
our enemies.
Hopefully, Congress will see the wisdom of averting this
slope.
~~~
The
White House walk-and-talk that changed Obama's mind on Syria
By Chuck
Todd, NBC News
Chief White House Correspondent
A
stroll around the White House grounds with his top adviser on Friday evening
changed President Barack Obama’s mind about getting Congress to sign off on a
military strike in Syria ,
senior White House officials told NBC News.
Obama
had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the
past week, the officials said. Obama was
convinced he had the evidence to back up a strike and as a result dispatched
Secretary of State John Kerry to make a passionate case for U.S. action. But only hours after Kerry called Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad "a thug and a murderer" and accused his
regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind
as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the
officials said.
NBC's
Chuck Todd describes the political process for seeking congressional
authorization for a strike on Syria, and says that the president's decision to
wait on Congress is a departure from 30 years of strengthening executive branch
power
Returning
from that walk, the president called his advisers in the early evening to
inform them of his new decision.
The
plan was immediately met with robust resistance from a whiplashed Obama team
who had listened to Kerry lay out the administration's strongest case yet for
action against Assad. "My friends, it matters here if nothing is
done," Kerry had argued. "It
matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens."
Obama's
National Security Council had believed since last weekend that requiring a vote
was not even on the table and that “consultation” in the form of congressional
briefings and behind-the-scenes conversation was all that would be needed
before a strike. One senior official
noted that no key leaders in Congress had specifically requested a vote on
military intervention.
Officials
said that after the president met with national security advisers on Aug. 24,
they determined the evidence showed Syria ’s Assad regime had used
chemical weapons in an attack earlier this month. At that time, the president indicated he was
leaning toward a strike.
But
a growing number of Congressional members were beginning to question the
administration’s strategy by the end of the week. And an NBC News poll
released Friday morning showed that nearly 80 percent of Americans agreed that
the president should seek approval in advance of taking military action.
Officials
said Obama also was influenced by Thursday’s lively debate in the House of
Commons, where Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote in Parliament to
authorize participation in an allied strike against Syria . Cameron had been a staunch advocate of
military action but was chastened in the wake of the vote. “It is clear
to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people,
does not want to see British military action,” Cameron said. “I get that,
and the government will act accordingly.”
While
Obama's advisers argued Friday night in private that the humiliating defeat for
Cameron starkly illustrated the risks of asking for congressional input,
the president responded that the vote in Parliament demonstrated exactly why he
should seek a vote on this side of the Atlantic, senior officials told NBC
News.
And,
the president insisted, seeking legislative backing was the approach most
consistent with his philosophy. While debate within the administration
continued into late Friday, by Saturday morning the senior advisers acquiesced.
Speaking
to the nation early Saturday afternoon, Obama said he was “mindful that I'm the
president of the world's oldest constitutional democracy. I've long
believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our
example as a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
President
Obama says the nation should and will take action against the Syrian
government, but not without congressional approval. The president also noted, “while I believe I
have the authority to carry out this military action without specific
congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we
take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.”
White
House aides said they are fairly confident that Congress will grant them the
authority to launch a strike, although they maintain that Obama would be acting
within his constitutional authority even if Congress rejects the authorization
and Obama orders military intervention.
Congress
is not scheduled to return to Washington
for debate until Sept. 9. The
administration decided not to call them back early due to the Jewish holidays
this week, a delay that the Pentagon also signed off on, saying that the wait
won’t diminish U.S. military capabilities in the region. There’s an upside to
that cooling-off period too, aides said. The delay gives Obama time to make his
case to Congress and to keep pushing for international support.
“Here's
my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global
community,” the president said Saturday. “What message will we send if a
dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no
price?”
While
the United States does not
believe it needs military help in a strike, Obama will push allies for
political backing when he attends the G20 summit in Russia next week.
Reaction
from Congress was mostly positive in the hours after Obama detailed his
position. A statement from House Speaker
John Boehner other GOP leaders stated: “We are glad the president is seeking
authorization for any military action in Syria
in response to serious, substantive questions being raised” and noted Congress would
begin debate when they return to Washington .
And House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, "President Obama is right
that the debate and authorization by Congress for action will make our country
and the response in Syria
stronger.”
But
a key group of Syrian rebels who have been fighting the Assad regime reacted in
surprise and anger to the decision.
"The
death will continue in Syria
because of the (failure of the) leadership of the United States to act decisively at
this point," said Louay Safi, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council.
"Obama had the moral responsibility (to) act and not waiver."
Carrie
Dann contributed to this report.
This
story was originally published on Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:11 PM EDT
COMMENTS RELATING TO THE ABOVE ARTICLE:
Below is a part of one
of many comments that followed a listing of Politicians reaction to the
President requesting approval from Congress regarding military action against Syria .
For those detractors of the president, this should give you a peek at his ability
to use the flaws of the GOTP to his advantage. He knows they have no choice but
to oppose and obstruct anything he does, and this plays right into that
weakness by 'allowing' them ownership of a no-win situation after he tested the
waters and found them a bit too hot for his comfort.
It's an interesting style of governing, but a lot more effective than
trying to butt heads with the teabillies. There are only three possibilities
here, and the president wins in all of them ... 1) the GOTP does nothing,
shifting the world's focus to them and taking the president off the hook; 2)
The GOTP votes 'yes' and they own the conflict if it heads south but take a
back seat to the president if it works out since it was his idea; 3) the GOTP
says 'no' and gets blamed for doing nothing to stop the illegal use of chemical
warfare by a terrorist regime.
They didn't even see it coming.
~~~
Obama Should Reveal
Secret Syria
Intercepts
Now is the time to
release intelligence—but not act on it.
Here we go again. Maybe. Ten years ago Colin Powell publicly presented
the United Nations with formerly top-secret information about a Middle East tyrant and weapons of mass destruction to
justify military action against him. The
tyrant was Saddam Hussein and the briefing turned out to be a concoction of
misinterpretation, wishful thinking, and, in the case of information from a
German spy codenamed “Curveball,” complete
fabrication. In a memoir published last
year, Colin Powell wrote that this presentation would forever be a blot on his
reputation. The same could be said for U.S. efforts at creating global
support for armed action.
Reports from various sources this week suggest that the Obama
administration has hard evidence—communications intercepts—proving Syrian
government involvement in the recent chemical weapons attack
on civilians that left at least 350 dead. Although the Los Angeles Times is reporting that some of this information
comes from Israel, other
reports suggest that the information is the product of CIA eavesdropping. It
also appears that Washington
is preparing to release some of it. How
can we do it right this time?
There are only two officials in the U.S. government who can declassify
information on their own authority: the president and the director of the CIA. During the Bush years Dick Cheney argued that
the vice president could, too, but no one hears Joe Biden making that argument
these days.
White House residents have used this power to influence
policy. Leaving aside the Bush administration’s great fail, the efforts have
brought mixed results, and these efforts don’t happen often. The two most famous examples took place in
1962 and 1986. During the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy decided to show
the world photographic evidence that the Soviets were placing offensive
missiles on Cuba .
In 1986, Ronald Reagan revealed intercepts from the Libyan government to make
his case that Muammar Qaddafi was involved in targeting U.S. service members in Europe and bombing the
LaBelle discotheque in Berlin ,
which killed three people and wounded scores more.
The U.S.
intelligence community does not like this kind of declassification. The eavesdroppers, in particular, worry that
once you blow a communications source by revealing intercepted information, the
target country will react by improving its communications security. The favorite example in NSA-world is ULTRA,
the information obtained by breaking Nazi ciphers during World War II. Had
Hitler learned how vulnerable his communications were, ULTRA could have been
lost and the battle for Europe would have
lasted considerably longer.
But presidents are elected to make the bigger call and overrule
intelligence security officers when necessary. There are times when international reputation
requires giving up an intelligence source to show that the United States
is not engaged in some imperial adventure. In light of recent events in Syria , this is
one of those times.
Kennedy decided to reveal actual U-2 photographs of Cuba, in the process
giving away some tradecraft secrets, such as the resolution of these spy
photographs. Reagan was a little more circumspect. In his televised speech on
April 14, 1986, he provided paraphrases of the intercepted information and not
the raw reports themselves.
“On March 25th, more than a week before the attack, orders were sent from Tripoli to the Libyan People's Bureau in East
Berlin to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans to cause
maximum and indiscriminate casualties. Libya 's agents then planted the
bomb. On April 4th the People's Bureau
alerted Tripoli
that the attack would be carried out the following morning. The next day they
reported back to Tripoli
on the great success of their mission.”
Nevertheless, Tripoli
learned enough from this revelation to improve its security.
There was, however, a big difference between President Kennedy and
President Reagan’s motives: Kennedy released the information to build
international support for the removal of the missiles. Reagan released the
information after the U.S. Air Force had bombed Tripoli, to justify unilateral
action.
President Obama needs to be thinking along the lines of building international
support for action, but not necessarily military action. A unilateral military attack by the United States —or one by NATO-light involving the
addition of only the United Kingdom
and France —is
a bad idea. Unless cruise missiles or
gravity bombs kill him, an attack will not unseat Assad. Instead it will be
manipulated by the Syrian regime and others—Russia —to further inflame
anti-American passions. And if history is a fair judge, it will not have a
deterrent effect. The 1986 attack on Libya did not end
Qaddafi’s sponsorship of terror. He immediately retaliated by having his secret
service “buy” one of the U.S. hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon—Peter
Kilburn, a librarian at the American University in Beirut—and kill him. Two
years later, Qaddafi ordered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103, which
crashed in Lockerbie , Scotland and killed 270 people. Unless the U.S. attack kills Assad, the
madness will continue.
It is not really clear why this is our fight. What did President Obama really mean last August when he apparently drew
a red line over the use of WMDs by the Syrians? Obama said that his reluctance to intervene
would change if he received evidence of a “whole bunch of chemical weapons
moving around or being utilized.” He
never made clear what a “whole bunch” meant or why this made the issue a U.S. military
rather than a humanitarian issue. If he were thinking about civilian deaths as
a threshold, why would it matter whether the deaths were caused by
unconventional weapons? Until historians
have at the entrails of the Obama administration in 40 years (or before then if
the Obama team produces better than average memoirs), we may not be able to
figure out whether the president just goofed. It is hard to believe that he
thought a statement would deter a desperate tyrant. Moreover, the statement
seems too uncharacteristically inarticulate to have been planned.
In any case, there is an
opportunity here to help Syrians attacked by their own government and
strengthen international ethics. If the Obama administration were just to
release the information it has and not act as if it wanted permission for a
decision already made, it might be able to transform this situation from Assad
vs. Obama into what it ought to have been all along: a case of Assad vs. the
conscience of the world.
Assuming that the intelligence is of the Kennedy/Reagan
and not the George W. Bush standard, the release would encourage a welcome
global discussion of Assad’s criminal behavior without the distraction of yet
another annoying and self-righteous “Why must Americans act like the world’s
policeman” gripe session among European elites. Some will claim that the information is
deception from the United States
and Israel ,
but if the actual intercepts are released the case will be harder to dispute.
(If there is audio, the accents and vocabulary would give the Syrians away.) At the same time, this release would expose
Assad’s international supporters to the condemnation that they deserve. The Soviet Union finally acknowledged what the
photographs showed, that it put missiles in Cuba . And this time, U.S.
intelligence evidence would similarly complicate Russia ’s ability to help a
troublesome ally.
As human beings, we ought to be concerned about the plight of Syrian
civilians. But this crime against
humanity should not be viewed as an American policy challenge—that’s a bit arrogant,
isn’t it? It is the world’s problem. Obama has the opportunity to shame the world
into doing the right thing. If that’s
what he meant by saying during the 2012 campaign that we are “the one
indispensable nation in world affairs,” great. Let’s use some of the products of the many
billions we probably spend on intelligence each year to force international
action to deal with yet another Middle East
tyrant. The raw intelligence should be
shared with the United Nations, with Doctors Without Borders and with the
International Court of Justice at the Hague
without being processed into a sanitized U.S. government white paper. Let
those organizations, helped by social media, spark a global conversation over
what the world community ought to do about it.
Meanwhile, we could join the British and the French (and I would expect,
the Canadians) in working behind the scenes with some newly developed nations
to demand action in the U.N. General Assembly. Among the responsibilities of being the sole
global superpower is the obligation to use restraint when prudent.
However, if what is meant by “indispensable nation” is that we ought to
launch tomahawks at Damascus to send a message (because we can), everyone
should take a deep breath and be reminded of yesterday’s news from Baghdad,
where a rash of car bombs has delivered yet more death and destruction to the
civilian population of a former foreign policy project of ours.
~~~
Seizure
of Hundreds of Dogs in Multi-State Organized Dog Fighting Raid
By Matthew
Bershadker
ASPCA President & CEO
ASPCA President & CEO
Some good
news on a topic laden with horror: Last Friday, the ASPCA helped end the
torture of hundreds of abused dogs in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas
and brought to justice those who—for profit and perverse pleasure—betrayed and
defiled the trust that connects humans and animals.
In an
operation that involved 16 animal welfare organizations, including The Humane
Society of the United States, as well as at least 10 federal and state law
enforcement agencies, 367 dogs across multiple locations in the Southeast were
seized in the second-largest dog fighting raid in U.S. history.
I spent
several years overseeing the ASPCA’s anti-cruelty group, where I witnessed or
heard first-hand accounts of unspeakable acts of cruelty, but rarely have I
encountered suffering of this size and scope. Dogs ranging in age from several days to 12
years were found emaciated and bearing typical scars of dog fighting, and left
to suffer in extreme heat with no visible fresh water or food. Some were tethered by chains and cables to
cinder blocks and car tires. Remains of dead animals were also discovered where
the dogs were housed and allegedly fought.
These are
the tell-tale signs of the horrors of dog fighting, the ultimate betrayal of
the unique relationship that exists between humans and animals. Manipulating a dog’s intense desire to please
its owner, perpetuating a life of chronic and acute physical and psychological
pain, is the most horrific form of animal abuse.
The only
consolation to this tragedy was the fact that, for the long-suffering animals
who survived, lives of brutal torture and neglect had come to an end, and days
of medical care and attention were about to start. Never again would they be forced to fight,
live in squalor, or be neglected and deprived of bare necessities. No animal on
earth—much less those often described as "man's best friend"—should
have to endure such brutality at the hand of man.
As part
of our raid, which we assisted at the request of the United States Attorney’s
Office and the FBI, federal and local officials also seized firearms, drugs,
and over $500,000 in cash from dog fighting gambling activities. All of these efforts were the result of a
three-year investigation initiated by the Auburn
Police.
Ten suspects
were arrested and indicted on felony dog fighting charges. If convicted, they could each face up to five
years in prison.
I believe
these atrocities and the subsequent results will have positive and practical
reverberations that will make a difference. The raid elevates the issue of dog
fighting -- a reprehensible and vile activity – to people who will not only be
appalled, but moved to share news and information, and fight for common-sense
legislation. Dog fighting is a felony in
all 50 states and the District of
Columbia , but that doesn’t seem to stop the atrocity.
Earlier this year, the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act was
reintroduced in the U.S. Congress, which would make it a federal offense to attend an organized animal
fight and impose additional penalties for bringing a minor to a fight,
expanding the implications of participation in this terrible crime.
I'm very
proud that we saved these animals, and the unprecedented ways we did.
This is not the last dog fighting ring we'll break up, but you can be sure
we'll be working hard until the day we can finally say it is.
~~~
If the good Lord is
willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next Tuesday September
10, 2013.
God Bless You All
&
God Bless the United States of America .
Floyd
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