Sunday, September 29, 2013

Syria, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?

        On August 4, 1964, two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, were operating in the Gulf of Tonkin when they were attacked by...no one.
        Relying on 'faulty intelligence' claiming that the destroyers were attacked by North Vietnamese naval forces, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which provided the legal basis for the Vietnam War during which over 50,000 Americans, an estimated two million Vietnamese and several hundred thousand Laotians and Cambodians were killed. Oh, well. Mistakes happen. Don't blame us. We only work here.
          And in 2003, in Iraq,
              "You got the WMD's?"
              "No, I thought you had them."
              "Hmm, maybe I left them in my other pants."
        And now, it's Syria's turn. Anybody know why we're getting involved in a sectarian, tribal, civil war when we can't even tell the good guys from the bad,
                                                                   ***
            "Who was that Shiite I saw you with last nite?"
            "That was no Shiite. That was my Sunni."
                                                                   ***
        If only the moderates would have an 'M' stamped on their foreheads and the Jihadi terrorists, a 'T.J.' (Arabic is read from right to left), it would all be so much simpler.