How I Wish I Could Wake Up

I thought we had crossed into a dream world (nightmare) when Bush invaded Iraq and decimated Falluja. I actually cried when I read that we had given the families living in Falluja a few hours notice to get out (into the surrounding desert!) or risk being blown to bits.  I now feel like the nightmare has descended to at least the sixth level of Dante’s Hell, and I am too stunned and depressed to cry.  This can't be real, can it?

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

Syrian rebel commanders described women and children being hauled from the rubble after an errant cruise missile destroyed a home for displaced civilians. Images of badly injured children also appeared on YouTube, helping to fuel anti-U.S. protests in a number of Syrian villages last week.

[...]

"I saw seven or eight ambulances coming out of there,” said Abu Abdo Salabman, a political member of one of the Free Syria Army factions, who attended the briefing for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff. “We believe this was a big mistake.”

  Yahoo

I think you believe wrong.  It's "how we roll."

[Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council] said that a much-publicized White House policy that President Obama announced last year barring U.S. drone strikes unless there is a “near certainty” there will be no civilian casualties — "the highest standard we can meet," he said at the time — does not cover the current U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq.

Has everyone gone completely mad? (Tangent: surely Detroit has…ye gods!)

Our government is now saying that Syria and Iraq do not meet the legal requirements for us to try not to kill their civilians!

Oh well, why not be honest?  We don't seem to have been trying anyway!

[Septmber 9] Over just the past week, the share of Americans who oppose U.S. airstrikes in Syria has surged 15 points, from 48% to 63%, as many who were undecided about the issue have turned against military action. By contrast, the share of Americans who support airstrikes remains virtually unchanged: Just 28% favor U.S. military airstrikes against Syria in response to reports that its government used chemical weapons.

  Pew Research

Well, that’s encouraging, but nobody in the Obama administration seems to care any more (not since he was elected) what the public thinks. Is there no one in Congress to stand up in outrage?

Most members of Congress expected the airstrikes to occur after they returned home to their districts, and privately, many of them conceded that they were relieved not to have to vote on a controversial topic just weeks before voters were to go to the polls in November.

[...]

House and Senate leaders said they were open to voting on a new measure giving new parameters for military action against ISIS, but not until after the election.

[...]

Democrats and Republicans who lead key committees approved of the President's move.

[...]

Before the strikes, Vice President Joe Biden reached out to one of the administration's most vocal critics, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who told CNN's Dana Bash that Biden told him the airstrikes would be "intense" and a "sustained effort."

Graham said he told Biden he was "very supportive" of the administration's move and would do what was needed of him to corral Congress if further congressional authorization is needed.

  CNN

[O]ne of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details,” Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

  Yahoo

A host of Democratic Senate hopefuls who rode anti-war sentiment into office in the past decade are running for reelection now as hawks, staking out hard-line positions on the latest upheaval in the Middle East.

[...]

Locked in a tough reelection battle, [first-term senator Democrat Kay Hagan] boasts that she’s more strongly supportive of airstrikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants than her Republican challenger, Thom Tillis, and says she’s been pressing the Obama administration to arm Syrian rebels since early last year.

[...]

[Bruce Braley, the Democratic Senate candidate in Iowa] is running against military veteran Joni Ernst in one of the most contested Senate races in the country.

“ISIS is a threat that must be stopped,” Braley said during a debate Sunday. “Anytime American citizens are attacked by a terrorist group, they need to be brought to justice or to the grave.”

[...]

Only one vulnerable Senate Democrat voted against that resolution to arm the rebels: Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, who warned that the weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

Every other Democrat facing a viable challenger, including Jeff Merkley in deep-blue Oregon and Al Franken in Minnesota, voted with the 78-member majority.

  Politico

Al Franken, too?!?

Republican candidate Scott Brown has been hammering Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen for failing to understand “the nature of the threat,” as he put it in one commercial that began airing last week. This has prompted the freshman Democrat to begin quietly running a response ad (her campaign has not released it to the news media), in which she says: “I support those airstrikes. I think it’s important for us to take the fight to ISIL.”