Watch this PBS Newshour interview tonight with Representative Grayson from Florida.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLbf0RWmXU
His petition is here: http://dontattacksyria.com/
Syria is uniting two Florida Representatives on opposite sides of the spectrum: Posey and Grayson. Maybe we could get Representative Grayson to see FATCA as an attack on the Globe and join with Representative Posey on HR.2299 to stop that too. I know, wishful thinking. That said, I encourage you to support Grayson on this one. Send Hallmarks, not missiles.
Signature count now stands at 55,807 Help push it past 100,000
Signed.
Signed.
Very interesting report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTsGSb3rM8&feature=youtu.be
Posey and Grayson represent directly adjacent districts. Posey represents Melbourne, Titusville, and Cocoa. Grayson represents Eastern Orlando including Orlando International Airport and Osceola County/Kissimmee.
The Onion has a solution. American’s overwhelmingly in favour of sending congress to Syria.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/poll-majority-of-americans-approve-of-sending-cong,33752/
“Citing overwhelming support from the international community—including that of the Arab League, Turkey, and France, as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada, all of whom are reported to be unilaterally in favor of sending the U.S. Congress to Syria”
@AtticusinCanada…
You can always count on the Onion to tell a broader truth! 🙂
NewsMax Poll results so far…
http://www.newsmax.com/Surveys/Results/id/88
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/opinion/on-syria-vote-trust-but-verify.html
WASHINGTON – THE documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion.
On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”
The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached – not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)
Over the last week the administration has run a full-court press on Capitol Hill, lobbying members from both parties in both houses to vote in support of its plan to attack Syria. And yet we members are supposed to accept, without question, that the proponents of a strike on Syria have accurately depicted the underlying evidence, even though the proponents refuse to show any of it to us or to the American public.
In fact, even gaining access to just the classified summary involves a series of unreasonably high hurdles.
We have to descend into the bowels of the Capitol Visitors Center, to a room four levels underground. Per the instructions of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, note-taking is not allowed.
Once we leave, we are not permitted to discuss the classified summary with the public, the media, our constituents or even other members. Nor are we allowed to do anything to verify the validity of the information that has been provided.
And this is just the classified summary. It is my understanding that the House Intelligence Committee made a formal request for the underlying intelligence reports several days ago. I haven’t heard an answer yet. And frankly, I don’t expect one.
Compare this lack of transparency with the administration’s treatment of the Benghazi attack. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to her credit, made every single relevant classified e-mail, cable and intelligence report available to every member of Congress. (I know this, because I read them all.) Secretary Clinton had nothing to hide.
Her successor, John Kerry, has said repeatedly that this administration isn’t trying to manipulate the intelligence reports the way that the Bush administration did to rationalize its invasion of Iraq.
But by refusing to disclose the underlying data even to members of Congress, the administration is making it impossible for anyone to judge, independently, whether that statement is correct. Perhaps the edict of an earlier administration applies: “Trust, but verify.”
The danger of the administration’s approach was illustrated by a widely read report last week in The Daily Caller, which claimed that the Obama administration had selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes in Syria, with one report “doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.”
The allegedly doctored report attributes the attack to the Syrian general staff. But according to The Daily Caller, “it was clear that ‘the Syrian general staff were out of their minds with panic that an unauthorized strike had been launched by the 155th Brigade in express defiance of their instructions.'”
I don’t know who is right, the administration or The Daily Caller. But for me to make the correct decision on whether to allow an attack, I need to know. And so does the American public.
We have reached the point where the classified information system prevents even trusted members of Congress, who have security clearances, from learning essential facts, and then inhibits them from discussing and debating what they do know. And this extends to matters of war and peace, money and blood. The “security state” is drowning in its own phlegm.
My position is simple: if the administration wants me to vote for war, on this occasion or on any other, then I need to know all the facts. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Alan Grayson, a Democratic representative from Florida, is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
@ Just Me
Do you think I could sign the Grayson petition (now at 77,000 names) with a .ca e-mail address? I wouldn’t want it to compromise the American signees but I’d sure like to sign.
@Em…
Of course, my regular email address, is .co.nz and that is what I used.
Done and thanks Just Me.
Generally speaking, I hate conspiracy theories when reality is weird enough, but who in their right mind is so deluded and swayed by propaganda to actually think attacking Syria is for just for humanitarian reasons? Why in the world do our leaders think the only way to send a message is attached to a missile? But when
AIPAC is strongly supporting the attack, pay attention.
and now for something with a change of tone, on Moyers and Company, that has a bit more serious credibility for me.
Andrew Bacevich on Taking Action in Syria
“If you think back to 1980,” Bacevich tells Donahue, “and just sort of tick off the number of military enterprises that we have been engaged in that part of the world, large and small, you know, Beirut, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia — and on and on, and ask yourself, ‘What have we got done? What have we achieved? Is the region becoming more stable? Is it becoming more Democratic? Are we enhancing America’s standing in the eyes of the people of the Islamic world?’ ‘The answers are, ‘No, no, and no.’ So why, Mr. President, do you think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome?”
By way of deception, THEY always do war. This will accentuate the serious situation the world is in right now. IF Gordon Duff at Veterans Today is correct “2000 nuclear weapons have been illegally moved” and “two nuclear bomber wings relocated and put directly under White House command”. AIPAC is now overtly whipping the US Congress to back Obombya in what could well become a nuclear WW3. Believe it or not but can anyone risk disbelief this time?
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/09/07/us-deploys-nukes-for-war/
I live for the day when MoveOn and Rep Grayson puts out a message like this about the FATCA global carpet bombing of Americans Abroad.
Dear MoveOn member,
Big Syria news: Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry proposed putting Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile under international control.
KERRY SHOCKED TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY
The proposal has a great deal of merit, and unlike military attacks, actually would prevent chemical warfare in the future. Syria, at the urging of its staunch ally Russia, has expressed a willingness to pursue this plan.
That’s why I started a petition imploring President Obama to avoid U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war, and pursue this constructive, peaceful outcome. Will you add your name?
Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.
Your voice matters. Sign on today.
–Rep. Alan Grayson
1. “Obama Calls Russia Offer on Syria Possible ‘Breakthrough’,” The New York Times, September 9, 2013
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=293505&id=74761-12778461-PNm4WTx&t=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-sdO6pwVHQ
Please, help us reach our goal of ¤1.6 trillion to support WWIII
@MarkTwain…
I’m in. I sent my check to Kickstarter! 🙂 I can’t help if it bounces.
Sarah Palin explains Syria and tells Obama “Let Allah sort it out!”