"He Gassed Hizzown People" "He Tried To Kill Mah Daddy" "No Dictator Can Gas Hundreds of Children"

[Stinky The Clown]

I guess who supports and who opposes such statements depends on who is saying them and not the facts behind them.

Watching the Sunday Talkies is hilarious, in a tragic sort of way. The most comic of all is the failed McCain son and grandson.

[blm]

1. Bush manufactured the intel to justify rush to war.

Obama did not, and he and Kerry have been working to prevent war in Syria for at least 8 years. Bush never tried to use diplomacy in Iraq for 8 days, let alone 8 years.

Big difference, I'd say.

Of course, if there is evidence that Obama just manufactured the evidence of widespread chemical attack that the UN has been analyzing this past week, I'd be open to hearing about it.

[HooptieWagon]

2. Uh, Obama didn't reveal his intel

so we don't know its accuracy. And the war in Syria only started in 2011 when Assad brutally quashed street protests...so how have Obama and Kerry been working to prevent it for 8 years?

[blm]

5. Bush, war hawks, and neocons wanted to attack Syria in 2005.

January 2005 was Kerry's first trip to build a relationship with Assad in order to press diplomatic solutions. He was helped with the revelations of Downing Street Memos in May2005 which further crushed Bush's credibility with other world leaders.

Arab Spring is when Assad began to lose his grip mentally and BEGAN to be unreliable and increasingly prone to miscalculation. I wasn't surprised to hear his brother ordered the chemical attack.

[Igel]

9. The uprising in Syria

was in response to the conditions that had held in Syria for years. What changed wasn't Assad--what changed was the people's willingness to protest. Quelling protest? That was a constant.

Moreover, they weren't protesting the democratic, reformist Assad that so many hoped he was. They were protesting the authoritarian Assad--not as bad as his father, but certainly not a great guy.

All the nonsense in 2005, 2006, 2007 by Kerry, Pelosi, and others was knee-jerk "You want regime change in Syria, we want whatever you don't want. You call Assad a tyrant who should be ejected by his people, we see a reformer that we want to work with. You're a neocon who wants to throw American power around, we want to be seen as sympathetic and cooperative. You want to force people, we want to convince people. We have an election to win, and if they don't like * they're bound to like the anti-*."

People just have more data on which to base their judgments. Assad hasn't changed; circumstances around him bring out more of what he is. In response, those who judged him to be reasonable because it was a politically expedient conclusion that they wanted to believe have also changed their conclusions. Those who wanted Assad gone in the mid-2000s were right. I don't define myself and what I think in relationship to Bush or Obama. I wanted Assad gone and when Pelosi and Kerry made their statements in 2005-2007 I believed them fools. I still want Assad gone. It's nice that they've come around to my point of view--it's only taken 6-7 years and over 100k dead, but hey, everybody has a learning curve.

DU had the same sort of thing, overall, with Qaddhafi. People defended Qaddhafi for a while. Then * warmed to him and they were hesitant--he as good as admitted he wasn't a good person. Then after the Arab Spring started he was clearly a monster. He was the same person; he changed but little.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. The point of the OP was not what Bush or Obama did, it is about who supports or opposes it.

Nice Miss!

McCain, as but one example, was as gung and as ho as anyone can be ether gung or ho when it was Colin Powell selling bullshit.

Fast forward to today, and the self same Johnny is all over the Sunday Chats telling us how bad the idea is now. Actually, not even the idea, but the execution.

Johnny 2001: HELL YEAH!
Johnny 2013: Um..... uh ... yeah but . . . . nope . . . well, maybe . . . .

Listen to Leader Boner for another example.

But there ya go . . . filtering everything through Obama glasses, even when a statement isn't about him.

[blm]

6. No - just knowing that Bush lied to have a war whereas Obama and Kerry have

worked for years to prevent using military force in Syria. Sorry - but that is a significant difference, Stinky.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. No one is arguing that. The OP - which I wrote - was about the war opposers now vs

the war supporters then . . . . and how they are the same people.

The flip side is also true. The war opposers then are the war supporters now.

What anyone did or didn't do the last 8 years is completely irrelevant to the intent of the OP. And since I wrote the OP, I know with certainty what the intent was. It was written as I was watching Johnny on Face The Nation.

[blm]

13. OK.

.

[pansypoo53219]

4. saddam did gas his people. but the blivet neglected to point out it was during their beloved reagan.

and we helped fuel the iraq/iran war.

[madinmaryland]

7. Heh! Blivet. Haven't heard that one in a while!!

[fadedrose]

8. Didn't I hear on Rachel that the US gave him the gas? nt

[Igel]

11. You probably did.

But it's not so.

The US sold Saddam a lot of precursor chemicals that Saddam used to make the gas.

There were individual countries in Europe that sold Saddam far more of the necessary chemicals. We "liked" those governments--they were in favor of strong social programs and such--and we didn't like Reagan. So when it comes to assigning blame, we overlook the countries that sold most of the chemicals and equipment to Saddam and focus on those we love to hate--Reagan and his ilk.

In the same way we ignore that many of the chemicals that "we" sold Saddam in the 1980s to such post-hoc opprobrium were the same chemicals that we condemned Bush II for not selling to Saddam in the early 2000s. And which we condemn Britain for selling to Assad in 2012.

Same stuff--whether it's good to sell the dual-use chemicals depends on who's doing the selling and how we feel about the purchaser, not their possible uses. Don't sell NaF to the Kurd-killer extraordinaire and you're responsible for killing babies because their drinking water isn't purified properly. Sell NaF to Assad and you're responsible for killing babies because some of it might have been used to make sarin. No need for cause and effect. No need for proof. We know who to condemn before we get any facts; we just need facts that can support our beliefs.

[fadedrose]

12. Thank you...

for your courteous correction. Yes, we do tend to forgive the ones we like for mistakes and never forget mistakes from people we love to hate.....As one of the ones we like, Rachel will be forgiven.

(Speaking of loving to hate, one person I haven't heard mentioned in this whole Syrian affair is Cheney...can't we blame something on him?)