Maher mocks Republicans: Are they really against attacking Syria, or are they just ‘black-tracking’?

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story 

Bill Maher not only got a laugh out of Republican flip-flopping during President Barack Obama’s administration on Friday, but he shared a new word for it with his Real Time panelists.

“It should be in the dictionary: ‘Black-track,’” Maher explained, defining it as, “The act of changing one’s mind because President Obama has agreed with you. See also: ‘Pulling a one-hatey,’ or the ‘Kenyan boomerang.’”

That led Maher to ask the panel whether Republicans really are opposed to a U.S. attack against Syria, or is it just a case of “black-tracking,” which would be corrected the next time a white president is elected.

“The ‘black-tracking’ part I don’t know about,” former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele answered. “But I do know that there is — appropriately and rightly — that libertarian voice that has always been in the background like this that [is] now beginning to assert itself.”

Steele pointed out that there were also Republicans who grew disillusioned with Obama’s predecessor, George W. bush, in 2006 and 2007.

“I remember Ron Paul at debates, saying the kinds of things that I’m hearing out of mainstream Republicans now, and getting booed off the stage,” Maher noted.

The problem for the “mainstream Republicans,” Rolling Stone correspondent Matt Taibbi interjected, was that the party fell on its face after the 2008 election, forcing it to search for a new identity.

“The Ron Paul ideology was kind of there to be appropriated,” Taibbi argued, to which Steele reponded by saying that voice was always there, only to be “supplanted by a neo-con ideology.”

“That was the aberration, right?” Taibbi asked sarcastically.

But now, Steele continued, Republicans were more likely to examine the consequences of military actions.

“So you don’t think it has anything to do with Obama — ,” Maher said, not directly mentioning the president’s race.

“I don’t. To be honest, I don’t,” Steele answered. “There are some idiots who do apply to that.”

“I am one of those idiots,” Maher offered.

Watch the discussion, posted on YouTube on Friday by “CoffeeAndNews41,” below.

Obama Walks The Line and Delivers a Masterful Speech on Syria

By: Jason Easley/politicususa

The president began by giving background on the civil war in Syria, and what the US government has done. Interestingly, Obama pointed out how he has resisted the calls for military action. Obama talked about Assad’s use of chemical weapons and called the images, “sickening.” The president said that, “The civilized world has spent over a century trying to ban them.” The president laid out the evidence that Assad was behind the chemical weapons attack on August 21.

Video of the entire speech:

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Syria And The Conservative Anti-Obama Reflex

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America

Over at Salon, Joan Walsh despairs at the possibility that an honest, productive debate over the need to intervene militarily in Syria will fall victim to the "familiar dysfunctional ditch of Republicans abandoning their historic values to sabotage Obama, and Democrats putting the need to support their beleaguered president ahead of their need to craft a new national security policy." She's talking primarily about the debate in Congress, now that President Obama is seeking legislative approval for the use of force, but there's also a great, big, gas-baggy media conversation to be had. And judging by the initial reaction to Obama's push to secure Congressional authorization, the conservative reflex to abandon principle and oppose Obama is already taking hold.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Kimberley Strassel whacks Obama for putting the Syria question before Congress, calling his "crude calculus" overtly political and asking: "When did a U.S. commander in chief last so cynically play politics with American credibility?" Per Strassel's reckoning, if Obama is going to intervene, he should own it:

Now trapped by his own declaration, Mr. Obama is reverting to the same strategy he has used in countless domestic brawls -- that is, to lay responsibility for any action, or failure of action, on Congress. The decision was made easier by the fact that Congress itself was demanding a say.

That proved too tempting for a president whose crude calculus is that Congress can now rescue him however it votes. Should Congress oppose authorizing action against Syria, he can lay America's failure to honor his promises on the legislative branch. Obama aides insist that even if Congress votes no, the president may still act -- though they would say that. The idea that Mr. Obama, having lacked the will to act on his own, would proceed in the face of congressional opposition is near-fantasy.

Now let's jump all the way back to March 2011, shortly after President Obama ordered military intervention in Libya. At the time, Strassel was incensed that Obama would order the use of force without consulting Congress, calling it bad policy and bad politics:

President Barack Obama is going on a week into military action in Libya. If he doesn't start explaining how and why, he's going to be fighting a rearguard action in Congress.

Commanders in chief are rightly accorded broad power to unilaterally order American military force. The smart ones understand they need to garner public and congressional support. Congress's backing is particularly crucial, given that body's own authority to play havoc with a military undertaking. In today's partisan political environment, presidential wooing is even more important.

[...]

This is what comes from waging war through the United Nations. The White House was determined not to move on Libya unless it could hide behind a U.N. resolution. The best that multinational body could muster was a vague and confused resolution backing efforts to stop Gadhafi from slaughtering civilians. That resolution, Mr. Obama's rationale for action, is now his constraint. To answer Congress's questions would require thinking and resolving beyond the U.N. remit. He's unwilling to do so.

The president seems instead to be hoping he can quickly hand this off to some other leader of the free world, and move on. But a failure in Libya will only bring more congressional questions. Better to define an actual U.S. strategy -- one that can succeed -- while Congress is still willing to listen.

You can argue that the circumstances surrounding Libya and Syria are different -- because they are -- but Strassel didn't leave a whole lot of wiggle room. Back when Obama didn't include Congress before ordering military action, she said Congressional consultation was the smart, prudent thing to do because the president needs political cover. Now that Obama is including Congress in the decision to initiate hostilities, she's calling it bad politics and trashing Obama for seeking political cover. The only consistency between Strassel's two positions is that they're anti-Obama.

The same reflex has also seized Fox News' senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano, who railed against the "terrible" War Powers Act when Obama was weighing unilateral action in Libya, but argued that it's "mystifying legally" that Obama would consult Congress on Syria when the War Powers Act allows him to act unilaterally.

It's difficult to have a serious, informed debate about the necessity of military action when influential right-leaning pundits are haphazardly jettisoning principle and contradicting themselves simply to be in opposition to a political figure they dislike.

Fox Analyst's Position On War Powers Act Depends On How He Can Attack Obama

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters For America:

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano is criticizing President Obama for seeking congressional authorization for a military strike on Syria after previously criticizing Obama for not seeking congressional authorization for a military strike on Libya.

Obama said he would seek Congressional authorization for a military strike on Syria during a September 1 speech. He stated that he believed the nation's power is rooted "in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people," adding: "[W]hile 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. We should have this debate, because the issues are too big for business as usual."

Napolitano criticized Obama for seeking legislative approval of military action in Syria during a September 3 appearance on Fox & Friends, calling his actions "mystifying legally why the president is asking Congress for authority to do something that it has already given him authority to do," citing the executive power granted under the War Powers Act to use U.S. forces in some circumstances for 90 days without congressional authorization. Napolitano and co-host Steve Doocy agreed this indicated Obama was treating Syria as a political issue.

While Napolitano is now criticizing Obama's effort to seek congressional authorization for a military strike, he previously criticized Obama for preparing a military strike without that authorization. In March 2011, when President Obama was considering military action against Libya without seeking congressional authorization, Napolitano warned that Obama could use "a terrible law called the War Powers Act," asking Sen. Mike Lee whether Obama was "planning to do something like that, whether the American people or the Congress wants it or not? Even though the Constitution says only Congress shall declare war?" 

From the March 7, 2011, edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck: 

NAPOLITANO: Senator Lee, it's interesting that Senator Paul said that he's reluctant to vote. You know as well as I that under a terrible law called the War Powers Act, the president can commit to us a land war, or an air war, whatever he wants to do, for 90 days and then renew it for another 90 days and there's nothing the Congress can do about it.

Is he planning to do something like that, whether the American people, whether the Congress wants it or not? Even though the Constitution says only Congress shall declare war?

McCain caught playing poker on his phone during Syria hearing

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had a flippant response on Tuesday to getting caught playing games on his phone during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing concerning a U.S. military strike against Syria.

The Washington Post posted a picture of McCain playing poker on his phone in the midst of the hearing, prompting him to respond on Twitter, “Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing — worst of all I lost!”

McCain, who earlier in the day mocked conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, also joked with Secretary of State John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, before the hearing began, telling her, “Sorry for what I’m about to do to John.”

Kerry Wavers, But Eventually Rules Out ‘Boots On The Ground’ In Syria

BY BEN ARMBRUSTER/Think progress

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday suggested that the Obama administration would not rule out the possibility that American troops would have to used as a consequence of any potential congressionally authorized military action against Syrian government targets in response to President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical weapons use late last month. But Kerry clarified that the administration would welcome a provision prohibiting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria as part of a war authorization resolution.

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ, the committee’s chairman, asked Kerry if “a prohibition for having American boots on the ground is that something that the administration would accept as part of a resolution.”

“It would be preferable not to, not because there’s any intention or any desire whatsoever to put boots on the ground,” Kerry replied. But he laid out a scenario in which U.S. troops might need to intervene inside Syria:

KERRY: I think the president will give you every assurance in the world as am I, as is the Secretary of Defense and the chairman, but in the event Syria imploded, for instance, or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interests of our allies and all of us, the British, the French and others, to prevent those weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the worst elements, I don’t want to take off the table, an option, that might or might not be available to a president of the United States to secure our country.

In making the case for military action in Syria, Obama administration officials have said it does not have any plans to introduce American troops into the conflict. President Obama said as much in his speech on Syria this Saturday.

“In that part of the world, there are ancient sectarian differences, and the hopes of the Arab Spring have unleashed forces of change that are going to take many years to resolve,” he said. “And that’s why we’re not contemplating putting our troops in the middle of someone else’s war.”

During the hearing on Tuesday, Menendez tried to clarify whether troops would be used for combat purposes. “Assuming that in the going to protect those weapons, whether or not they had to answer a shot in order to be secure, I don’t want to speak to that,” Kerry said. But the nation’s top diplomat then steered back to the administration’s pledge to not put U.S. troops in Syria.

“The bottom line is that the president has no intention, we do not want to put American troops on the ground to be involved in the fighting of this civil war,” Kerry said, later clarifying further that “[t]here is no problem in our having the language that has zero capacity” for U.S. troops in Syria.

Fox News analyst: ‘Very high probability’ Iraq hid WMDs in Syria

By David Edwards/Raw Story

A Fox News military analyst who has previously justified the U.S. invasion in Iraq by asserting that Russia conspired to hide Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now says that there is a “very high probability” that those WMDs are in Syria.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday spoke to retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney about recent rumors of a chemical attack near Aleppo, Syria.

“What are the chances of the return address on these chemicals being from Iraq?” Kilmeade wondered.

“Well, I think there is a high probability of that,” McInerney declared. “That’s conjecture, but we do know prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, there was a lot of vehicles crossing the border into Syria. And there was a great deal of conjecture. A Iraqi major general swore by it. He said he delivered it.”

“And so I think that it would be a very high probability if we could get into those bunkers that they would have Iraqi signatures on them.”

In 2006, McInerney told Newsmax that there was “clear evidence” that Iraq had WMDs before the war and that the Bush administration “ignored Russia’s involvement” in helping to hide the weapons.

“[T]he administration needed the Russians, the Chinese and the French, and was not interested in information that would make them look bad,” he said.

A U.S. official on Thursday said that evidence suggested that chemical weapons (CW) had not been used in the latest attacks in Syria.

“Our growing sense is that weaponized CW was not used,” the official remarked, according to Reuters.

A European security official noted that the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria would have left a death toll much higher than 26.

Watch this video from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast March 22, 2013.