@Big Al

One of my roommates said that he approved of what Trump had done, and the poor guy got overflowing earfulls about the situation until he finally said 'Uncle' and started talking about government corruption... Am I ever glad I don't watch TV!

"Ain't that America, you and me."

It's all based on lies, that's the thing. Even people who know that can get caught up in the details and forget the primary issue, that it's all lies. My daughter and granddaughter asked me about the Syria attack yesterday and I told them that it is nothing but power and greed games among the rich and powerful, it has nothing to do with our security and safety and nothing to do with the safety and security of Syrians. If more people could get that thru their heads.

@dkmich

[comment:body]

@CB

I think he will discover it to be very firm. The question is, how hard and to what extent will Trump dare to push the Russian bear in Syria? If this boils down to a battle of wits between Putin and Trump, we'll have a chess player vs a checkers player.

The supposed casus belli for the attack was of course, a steaming pile of bullshit. Which did not prevent msm from eagerly swallowing it as per usual... msm's appetite for war propaganda, even low-grade propaganda like this, being positively voracious.

And to what effect, Trump's belligerence? By most accounts, more than half those Tomahawk missiles missed their target, and Syrian airfield will be again operational in a matter of days. I think probably the attack was more of a political stunt to bolster Trump's macho image, than a serious attempt to inflict damage on Syrian forces. And probably Putin is aware of this... thank Dog, as you say.

Or maybe not -- it's very difficult to gauge the degree of "logic" behind anything Trump does.

But if Trump were to continue pushing, prodding, and/or harrassing the R+6 coalition, I think there could be very serious consequences indeed. Exactly where Putin's red line might be, we don't know. But I think Trump could very easily stumble across it unawares and unprepared. Advance planning is obviously not his strong suit.

the new president this may be the best chance they will ever get.

Of course this information could also be useful for future compliance. Maybe the Trumpster was suckered into this rash decision? His entire public performance for the last two years has been based on rash comments that had not been fully thought out. He ended up walking them back. But his missile strike on Syria cannot be walked back. The man is a grave threat, not only to America but to world peace.

When was the last time America had the proverbial "bull in a china shop" as president? Truth be told, Trump has now proven to be unfit for service. Not that Her would be much better. We live in interesting times. Hopefully we may live to tell our grandchildren about it.

Donald Trump Is An International Law Breaker by Publius Tacitus
Donald Trump's decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.
4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.
5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called "first responders" handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through "Live Agent" training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

There are members of the U.S. military who were aware this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force.
...

Thank Dog that the adversaries in this instance are rational people. Putin and Lavrov, the only adults in the house at this time. It will be interesting how they will play out their next move. It will not come spontaneously nor quickly but will be well thought out and reasoned.

@CB

His previous statements were never anything but campaign rhetoric. He had to take a position different from HRC and Obama, so he said they were all wrong on this. If they had been against intervention, he'd have called them weak and been in favor of it. He ran as NotObamaClinton, saying whatever it took to appear to be the opposite of them. None of it had anything to do with what he would do as president.

That to me is what has been made clear in this complete reversal. He never believed what he was saying about it in the first place.

But even if he did, being generous, and has suddenly changed his "thinking" on the subject... it was always obvious that Trump is reactionary and insecure, making him extremely easy to goad and jerk around and control by manipulating his ego.

So it's to be expected that he would be mercurial and highly unpredictable at best, prone to changing his ideas on a dime, depending on what is expedient to making him popular and/or who he is listening to at any given moment.

Because he has no core beliefs or firm center within his own mind, no one can predict what he will do, and nothing he says mean anything in terms of what he will say tomorrow, or even 5 minutes from now. Some have argued that this is a good thing. Others think he's as smart as he says he is, and brilliantly playing elaborate multidimensional chess. I don't see that at all. I think his instability and mental weakness are very dangerous. But it's not surprising and his supporters, like Ann Coulter, who are now acting shocked and angry at this reversal, make me laugh. What did they expect when they decided to support a childlike bully who is an obvious liar and con man with no principles?

for President of the United States fully agrees with you!

Here are 45 times Trump said attacking Syria was a bad idea and might start World War III

President Donald Trump's administration ordered a missile attack on the Syrian government's al-Shayrat airbase near Homs on Thursday evening, taking a rapid about-face on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to a military conclusion in the wake of a chemical attack which killed scores and left hundreds injured.

But Trump has repeatedly spoken out against attacking the Syrian government, suggesting U.S. involvement in the conflict could make a bad problem worse and possibly lead to a global war.

Is Trump psychotic, schizophrenic, insane, an idiot or does he have early onset dementia? It has to be one of these. There is no other explanation for his erratic behavior.

@boriscleto

Would mean acknowledging global warming. The corporate media can never allow that.

@CB by what politicians say while they're trying to get our votes.

Donald J. Swamp: How the Man Who Promised to Drain the Swamp Got Drained by the Swamp
There were only three reasons that a rational person might have considered going out to vote for Donald J Swamp. The first was that he wasn’t the psychopath, Hillary Clinton. The second was that he looked to be the least likely of all the candidates to start a war with Russia and therefore WWIII. And the third was that he said he was going to “drain the swamp”. They were always very thin reasons. As I wrote back here and here:

“People have elected a loose cannon, and although I will hold my breath and give him a chance, nothing about his character, his temperament, not to mention some of the more stupid statements he has made, gives me much confidence that America in four years will be a whole lot better than the America of 2016.”

“Granted, one of the candidates appears, at least on the surface, to be marginally less likely to lead us to a global war than the other. Isn’t that a rational reason to vote for him? Possibly, until you consider that the “marginally-less-likely-to-lead-us-to-global-war-candidate” often appears to decide his foreign policy by the use of a roulette wheel, and so whether trusting in the wheel can be counted as rational is a moot point … The swamp that needs draining is far bigger than the one Mr Trump locates in D.C., and it will take national repentance, not another politician making grand promises, to achieve that.”

And so it has proved. Despite being elected on promises of discontinuing America’s heinous policies of regime change and fighting hegemonic wars in countries thousands of miles from its borders, Mr Swamp has now broken all of these promises. It is not yet clear whether these promises were always hollow, or whether he has simply caved in to enormous pressure from the neo-Trotskyist Deep State (laughably known as neo-“conservative” (what do they conserve?)).
...
The slim hope that those who voted for Mr Swamp had that he wasn’t a psychopath, that he might stop US warmongering around the globe, and that he would drain the swamp now lie in tatters after his vain, stupid, irrational, dangerous and unconstitutional rush to war to appease the Deep State. I doubt very much whether he will be President by the end of the year. The man who promised to drain the swamp has been drained by the swamp. Donald J. Swamp.