[QUOTE=chalsall;351210][QUOTE=cheesehead;351202]So, what is "crucial" to Ernst's argument, [I]according to Ernst himself[/I] ... doesn't exist![/QUOTE]
Meanwhile, people are dying....

Edit: And many more likely will before this game is over.[/QUOTE]Let me try to clarify what I have, and have not, been trying to get at with my posts #7, 10 and 19:

A. [I]I'm not trying to claim that Ernst's assertions about the Obama administration are false.[/I] I'm just demonstrating that certain claims Ernst makes about evidence and logic supporting his argument have holes.

Ernst is quite capable of showing you actual evidence and sound logic; I wish he would simply do that instead of attacking me when I point out that he hasn't shown you what he should.

B. I conceded Ernst's reasonable retort about evidence for my first post. I also tried to signal that I wasn't claiming my post had more evidential support than his, and I didn't want to pursue that subject further.

C. Ernst then (post #13) tried to deceive this thread's readers by:

(1) falsely claiming that his OP claim had more support than it actually did.

(Note that Ernst did not try to bolster his claim [I]by actually quoting his own words from the OP that would have constituted supporting evidence and logic, in order to demonstrate that my criticism had been inaccurate[/I], which would have been an obvious step for him to take if my criticism had actually been wrong!)

and

(2) employing a belittlement tactic that he's used on me in the past, which he may be doing to try to persuade this thread's readers not to give serious attention to my criticism of Ernst.

[I]Note: I'm not complaining about the attempted belittlement per se; I'm complaining about Ernst's use of it to try to deceive his readers. I'm calling it to readers' attention so they can recognize where Ernst has done that in the past, also.[/I]

D. I think Ernst needs to learn to accept criticism about holes in his politically-oriented attacks, and then just repair those holes -- without employing an [I]ad hominem[/I] attack on his critic.

If Ernst, in post #13, had simply shown us supporting evidence for his OP (setting aside the matter of whether such evidence had been [I]in[/I] the OP), then it would have made sense subsequently to contrast that to the administration's lack of provided evidence. But Ernst couldn't resist getting in more shots at me instead of simply presenting evidence, which left himself in the unfortunate position of claiming that a nonexistent distinction was "crucial" to his argument.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;351220]Let me try to clarify what I have, and have not, been trying to get at with my posts #7, 10 and 19:[/QUOTE][SIZE="1"]Did I encourage this bromance? There is no clarity needed. Just accept props for the positive aspects, take a nice sigh of relaxation and browse the world for fresh insights to bring into the thread moving it forward.[/SIZE]

In other news, [URL="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-syria-crisis-britain-parliament-idUSBRE97R19220130828"]Britain pushes back Syria chemical attack response timetable[/URL].[QUOTE]An amendment tabled by the Labour Party said it would support military action only if members of the U.N. Security Council saw the inspectors' report first, among other conditions.[/QUOTE]This is mildly encouraging.

Rushing to war is indeed something I would not dare to say to anyone in Syria itself.

There is no civil war in Syria, and there is no 'Arab spring' in Syria like there was in Tunesia. This is a war between Iran and Saudi-Arabia, Syria is only the battle ground. Iran has been trying to encircle Saudi-Arabia using Yemen, Sudan, the Gaza strip (controlling the Sinai desert) and Iraq and attacking it. The Saudis stopped asking the West for help and acted themselves when Bahrein got stirred up by the ayatollahs.

Syria was their best option for curbing Iranian influence. Syria has an 85% Sunni population whereas every single action over there is controlled by Shi'a Iran. From Syria Iran also controls Lebanon where Hizb'allah represents a tiny fraction of the Lebanese people yet wields most of the power.

Fast forward to these days. There are many factions and countries fighting in Syria. Among them a very large contingent of highly trained Iranian Revolutionary guards and the about 5.000 Basiji. The Basiji are Iranian thugs selected by their government normally to control the Iranian people. They are not well trained or armed, but they don't need to be since they are only used to conrol areas where potential unrest needs to be curbed beforehand. You don't want them in your neighborhood.

Saudi-Arabia and Qatar have hired their own troops from elsewhere, like they did in Afghanistan during the Sovjet occupation. Not something we fancy over here. There are also many factions of the Syrian people fighting to protect their tribal ground, they are generally the closest to our Western liking and the best hope for future stability in a so diverse population.

Since the conflict spilled over to countries like Jordan and others the Obama government and some European and Arab allies started to train Syrian people for the battle in Syria to fight against the Alawite (Assad) - Iranian troops and curb the influence of Al-Nusra (Al-Qaida) as a side effect. About 500 of these troops entered Syria from Jordan a few days before the Syrian government, after consultation with Iran (like every move), answered with poison gas attacks against the Sunni population and Grad missile attacks on Israel from Lebanon by Jihad Islami (another Iranian controlled group).

The 500 troops had started to shift the balance a little and Assad correctly understood that a further growth of this force threatened his remaining reign over the country. The gas and the rocket attacks are his 'double or quits' approach to prevent his forces from being pushed back for certain over a period of time. A fast all out war has better prospects for him since it would have to be fought by US and European allies in front of their voters who don't understand the Middle East and don't want to be involved. Also the UN would have to give some kind of mandate which the Russian ally can prevent or wear down.

The orders to use poison gas were given out in the open so much as to declare responsibility as a way of defying the Western attempts to influence the outcome of the battle between Iran and Saudi-Arabia.

As a European citizen I applaud the US president for taking responsibility to defend the Syrian people's aspiration to more freedom they ever had since Hafez al Assad took power more than 40 years ago. Even if geopolitical motivations govern his decisions.

The immediate top article jump from the front page of the UK Huffingtonpost is "WHERE THE WORLD STANDS ON SYRIA," which jumps to this article: [URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/international-syria-intervention_n_3829832.html"]In Considering Syria Strike, Ghosts Of Past Interventions Haunt World Powers[/URL]. It is a good survey of what countries are saying and doing about Syria. One thing:[QUOTE]While Europeans and North Americans debate the consequences of military action from the relative comfort of geographic remove, Tunisians -- already within the orbit of Syria's bloody civil war and the broader conflagration in much of the Arab world -- are reacting with a mixture of concern and confusion.

An estimated 2,000 Tunisians have left for jihad in the Syrian conflict, and the nation has apparently inherited dozens of jihadist fighters fleeing the strife in Mali. Arms smuggling is thriving, thanks to networks in neighboring Libya. The crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could send underground members to join active Islamic militant networks in the Sahel desert.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=cheesehead;351220](2) employing a belittlement tactic that he's used on me in the past, which he may be doing to try to persuade this thread's readers not to give serious attention to my criticism of Ernst.[/QUOTE]Speaking only for myself, I have to say that your lengthy, not to say tedious, point by point attention to every single perceived wrong is much, much more likely to persuade me to give up reading your posts whether or not they deserve serious attention than are Ernst's tactics.

Again, only IMO, your readership is more likely to pay attention if you drop some of the less productive rejoinders and edit the remainder for brevity.

I've probably already typed too much, so let's leave it there.

Paul

[QUOTE=xilman;351237]I've probably already typed too much, so let's leave it there.[/QUOTE]

As the saying goes, "Less is more.

“Brvty is t' sistr of talent,” as [URL="http://quotabl.es/quotes/36125"]A.Chekhov[/URL] could have said.

[QUOTE=Prime95;351218]How much profit do you see being made on 3 days worth of cruise missles?[/QUOTE]

At [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_missile"]estimates of USD $1.4M each (2011 costs)[/URL], possibly quite a bit...

In the voice of Laurie Anderson...

"Ring... Ring... Ring...

"Hello?

"This is the West. Are we speaking to President Bashar al-Assad?

"Ah. Yes...

"You might want to clear your airport's runways....

[QUOTE=Prime95;351218]This is all a bit too much conspiracy theory for me. Why do banksters and other well-connected businessmen need to start a war to make money? As you've detailed in the MET thread, they already have a backdoor into the Federal Reserve, they've got enough politicians in their pockets to legalize any number of ripoffs of the average consumer. How much profit do you see being made on 3 days worth of cruise missles?[/QUOTE]

For the bankster-cartels it's not so much warmongering per se - that is still the province of the classic MIC - as keeping the debt spigots open as wide as possible, and adding new capacity whenever possible. Like the white-hat banker says in [i]The International[/i], the business model of modern banking (and I doubt this was a modern innovation, perhaps mainly the degree is what has changed) is debt slavery. Sure, you make a lot of money from day-to-day consumer financial rape, but why limit yourself to nickling-and-diming - relatively speaking - Joe and Jill Sixpack when you can greatly supplement both your income and your political influence via sovereign-debt financing on a truly massive, whole-GDP kind of scale? For your typical megabank-top-exec, however much you're making now, it can never be enough.

Consider the relative sizes of debt in play here: Total consumer [url=http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/07/08/average-credit-card-debt-take-your-pick/]revolving debt[/url] - which includes but is not limited to credit card debt - is slightly less than $1 trillion. Even with the [url=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/27/student-loan-debt-cripple-young-americans]unprecedented ramp-age in recent years[/url] of student-loan debt, total outstanding student debt currently totals $1.2 trillion. In other words each of those "total present accumulations" of debt is in the same ballpark as current *annual* net debt issuance by Uncle Sam.

So, in the case of the megabanks, my argument is not that they have a specific interest in war, but rather that governments' need to borrow for such things leads to a kind of "self-organizing conspiracy", if you will, for which the motive force is deficit financing.

[i]Aside:[/i] On the specific topic of money-for-war, that is a fascinating subject in its own right. History is replete with examples of financiers-to-warmongering who gained inordinate wealth and power thereby.

[QUOTE=cheesehead;351067]Congress's gradual (since WW2) abdication of responsibility in granting the President such leniency in directing military action against other countries as he now has, is another matter.[/QUOTE]

"Does Obama need congressional approval to bomb Syria?"
[URL]http://news.yahoo.com/does-obama-need-congressional-approval-to-bomb-syria--174613463.html[/URL]
[quote]If President Barack Obama chooses to unilaterally launch a military attack against Syria in retaliation for the government's alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians last week, he is certain to face criticism that he's overstepping his executive authority.

The president has already run up against resistance from some members of Congress, who argue that under the 1973 War Powers Resolution and the U.S. Constitution he must seek the body’s full approval before taking military action against the country.

The disagreement is part of a larger and thorny constitutional and legal argument over how far Congress can go to check the chief executive's war powers and what types of military actions constitute war.

. . .

The U.S. involvement in Kosovo, the Korean War and other conflicts all began without a congressional vote. The last official declaration of war by Congress was for World War II, as the power to use force has gradually shifted away from Congress and toward the chief executive. The Constitution does not require the president even to have a good reason to attack another country, Yoo said.

But other scholars disagree with Yoo’s interpretation and think a unilateral strike on Syria without congressional authorization will constitute a legal gray area. Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith [URL="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/08/why-doesnt-president-obama-seek-congressional-approval-for-syria/"]wrote on Wednesday that “the use of military force in Syria is a constitutional stretch[/URL] that will push presidential war unilateralism beyond where it has gone before.”

. . .

Meanwhile, there’s the issue of whether an attack on Syria would be legal under international law.

. . .[/quote]