The Wrongologist

What’s Wrong Today:

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony Tuesday about the potential use of military force in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey all testified. The hearing lasted about 3½ hours. At the conclusion, the Committee said they were close to producing the text of a resolution to authorize Mr. Obama to bomb Syria.

Unfortunately, that was way too long for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who, reported WaPo, decided to play poker and Japanese Casino online 2019 on his smart phone during the hearing: 

McCain tweeted:

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Of course Johnny Volcano lost, that’s what he does best. But he had his defenders in the press. Andrea Mitchell tweeted:

@SenJohnMcCain acknowledges getting caught on cam playing iphone poker at senate hearing on #Syria -can you blame him? 3 hrs +4:2p.m. Tue, Sep 3

Apparently, the hearing bored BOTH McCain and Mitchell. And yes, Andrea, we CAN blame him. The committee is talking about whether to authorize aggression against Syria that will certainly kill people, but the Senator couldn’t pay attention? These pols can’t even take a possible war seriously?

We can all agree that Secretary Kerry is repetitious and drones on and on, but when they are proposing bombing strikes on a country that is no threat to us, paying attention is a job requirement.  

Andrea Mitchell is defending poor old Senator dose and drool? Apparently her attention span isn’t all that good either. She proves right there that the main stream media are as disconnected from the public as are the politicians.

Despite what John and Andrea thought, there were reasons to listen carefully to what was said at the hearing. Below are extensive quotes from Empty Wheel, an indispensable blog on NSA, privacy and government overreach. Marcy Wheeler (empty wheel herself) outlined some important lessons learned from the testimony:

Lesson #1: We’re going to war so we don’t lose some friends

John Kerry twice said that if we don’t bomb Assad we’ll lose friends and/or allies. ”If we fail to act we’ll have fewer allies.”

That admitted something that has been acknowledged — usually not in print — in DC. We’re doing this not to retain our general credibility, but to retain “credibility” with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Credibility with Saudi Arabia is important, I presume, because they continue to sell oil in dollars and buy lots of military toys — including $640 million of cluster bombs that undermine everything the Administration says about humanity.

Credibility is important with Israel because if they don’t believe we’ll attack Iran if they need us to, they’ll just attack on their own. Here’s confirmation of something that had already been confirmed but somehow is getting trotted out again today: the US had to stop Israel from unilaterally attacking Iran last year. (Update: As Max Blumenthal notes, AIPAC’s statement in favor of war mentions Iran more than Syria.)

Lesson #2: The friends we do have don’t want anyone to know they are our friends

At one point, when Kerry was asked who in the region support[s] us, he deferred to closed session…This is likely about protecting Jordan, where we’re staging covert operations, which would make an easy target for Assad. Kerry implied Jordan supported this action, though was pretty coy about it. Still, back when we attacked Saddam in 1991, he still had WMD. His neighbors knew that. But they were willing to openly support our attack on him. Not this war.

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Lesson #5: Whatever comes out of this resolution is separate from effort to oust Assad

Kerry and Obama have both said these attacks will be limited and don’t aim to oust Assad. But it became clear over the course of the hearing (as witnesses tried to balance those like McCain and Ron Johnson, who wanted more war, and those like Tom Udall, who wanted limits) that in addition to this strike there’s the pre-existing policy of increasing our support to the rebels, effectively to oust Assad. So while this strike is not about regime change, it exists on top of a strategy that is about regime change.

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Lesson #7: The Administration claims it has evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” against Assad

Both [Sen] Menendez and Kerry both claimed we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt against Assad. Kerry even noted that’s the standard we use to send people away to prison.

Neither one, of course, explained why we weren’t referring (nor trying to — it would take a Security Council referral) Assad’s crimes to the International Criminal Court. But as they did with Anwar al-Awlaki, they believe that declaring something “beyond a reasonable doubt”…is sufficient and they don’t need to wait for UN inspectors or real juries.

It seems likely that the Senate will pass a resolution empowering Mr. Obama. It sure is weird how our politicians can act all warm and bipartisan when there are either people to kill or rich people to throw money at.

When it comes to anything else, both political parties are sworn enemies! How do we rid ourselves of these tools? A pox on both their houses.

It’s quite amazing to witness this normally clandestine love affair between the Democrats and Republicans blossom in public view. This bursting into bloom only happens, though, when public opinion reveals the lovers’ hand, like with TARP or now, with Syria.

Please, somebody buy Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama World of Warcraft so we can go back to worrying about unemployment and not our “credibility” with Israel.