Has Obama administration gone wobbly on Syria?’

Syria, chemical weapons and the United States. If nothing else, President Barack Obama last month was emphatic. “I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad,” Obama declared at the National Defense University in early December, “….The world is watching. The use of chemical weapons is…totally unacceptable….[T]here will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”

But what a difference a New Year makes. At a January 10 news conference, the administration’s senior security officials, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff head Martin E. Dempsey, recoiled: Consequences won’t involve the Pentagon. Better wait to secure the arsenal after Syrian President Bashar al-Assad falls, Panetta said. Dempsey stated: “Preventing the use of chemical weapons would be almost unachievable.” The result, as Panetta explained: “We’re not working on options that involve boots on the ground.”

Assad must have smiled. Washington had gone wobbly on chemical weapons. With the deterrent value of the president’s remarks in question – and one unconfirmed report that Syria used a chemical agent in Homs on December 23 – the chemical specter remains. This raises the key question: Would Obama really stand by if the Syrian government gassed thousands of its citizens?

Before we answer,Watch Later Lifescape airpurifier 66 views 3 months ago Just thought I'd upload this cool track. let’s hit the pause button for a reality check: Are chemical weapons really more heinous than the bombs that have already killed some 60,000 Syrians. This continuing mayhem has not justified military intervention so far. Why would chemical weapons be different?

Lift the pause button and one suspects it would be hard for the U.S. government to turn a blind eye to a Halabja on steroids – Halabja being the last case where an Arab regime (Iraq in 1988) killed thousands of its people in a chemical attack.

But the tug to save lives is countered by another specter: Quashing Assad’s chemical capacity could plunge the U.S. into a new military quagmire.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth werkzeugbaus truck Descriptions.

Obama clearly has the authority to act. If he wishes to use force, under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, he can do so for at least 60 days without congressional approval.

But to avoid Congress now would be a mistake.The 3rd International Conference on custombobbleheads and Indoor Navigation. The flummoxed administration needs another set of eyes to determine what is in the national interest.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth Original buymosaic Descriptions. Congress can do this,High quality glassbottles tiles. assuming it can act with independence and reverse the legacy of deferring to the executive branch on matters of war and peace. Granting presidents, for example, broad authority to use military force without proper vetting – as the Gulf of Tonkin and Iraq war resolutions illustrated – ill-served the country.

To this end, Congress should reconvene the hearings begun last session. This time, however, it must press for details about the administration’s assumptions about intervening or not. In addition, all the hearings should be public – not secret, as the administration prefers. This will give the American people confidence in the decision-making.

Congress should mold its findings into a joint House and Senate resolution – still plausible on national security issues even as legislators divide on budgetary matters – unblemished by executive branch drum-beating or quaking.

If Congress does this, it won’t just be addressing the Syrian challenge. It will finally begin to right the imbalance of power between the executive and lawmakers that for too long has dominated American war deciding.

This will begin to fulfill what the War Powers Resolution intended – to “insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the president will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities.”

Bowlsby gave the typical conference realignment double-talk by saying that the Big 12 feels, “very good about where we are”, but not failing to mention that, “we’d be unwise to be oblivious to all that is going on around us. We need to be constantly vigilant”. That is about as close as us Big 12 supporters are going to get to having Bowlsby guarantee that the Big 12 will expand prior to 2014, though he did mention that staying at 10 members or allying with other conferences without adding teams were possibilities.

Though it might seem like the most pressing matter, conference composition was not the number one item on the agenda for the meetings. Rather, the primary focus of the ADs was to discuss the future of Big 12 bowl tie-ins.

The conference has to do so because the Cotton Bowl, which currently has the first pick of non BCS bound Big 12 teams come bowl season, is set to become part of the rotation of semifinal game sites once the new playoff system comes into effect in 2014. Bowlsby stated that once the host bowls are finalized over the next few months, the Big 12 will want to reach out to different bowls in order to secure spots for its members in prestigious games. He went on to say that both the Alamo Bowl and the Meineke Bowl (it is the friggin’ Texas Bowl people, COME ON!) have, “expressed a desire to move up and-or maintain a high level of association” with the Big 12.

Other potential sites for future Big 12 bowl engagements include games played in Florida. Siting the fact that the majority of the nation’s recruits come out of Texas, Florida, and California, Bowlsby expressed that the Big 12 desires to have a strong presence in all three states during bowl season. They already have Cali ties due to their involvement with the Holiday Bowl.