‘Limited Engagement’? White House Just Expanded the Syrian Target List

Melissa Melton
Activist Post

Ahead of the Congressional vote next week on Obama’s supposed ‘limited’ military strike in Syria, the Pentagon has already expanded the list of intended Syrian targets.

CBS reported on the broadening of the upcoming U.S. military campaign in Syria just this morning:

The Pentagon has expanded the list of potential targets for a U.S. military strike on Syria, based on intelligence indicating that the Assad regime has moved around equipment used to deploy chemical weapons in anticipation of a potential attack. A Pentagon official insisted to CBS News correspondent David Martin that the scope of the operation has not changed, which President Obama has described as limited and tailored.

Many people are concerned that Obama’s enthusiasm with regard to attacking Syria is a replay of the George W. Bush White House’s WMD lies that got America mired in the most recent Iraq War — a war that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan later admitted was ‘largely about oil’ and which left over a million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. troops dead. Meaningful evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s regime is responsible for a chemical attack on Syrian civilians has not been produced; instead, evidence has surfaced that the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels committed the attack.

Russia actually released a 100-page report back in July blaming the rebels for another chemical attack against Syrians earlier this year. There were no calls for the U.S. to intervene then. That same month, Obama reaffirmed his commitment to the rebels in a phone call to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah as U.S. arms shipments bound for rebel hands were stalled in Washington.

Meanwhile, the president has announced he is going to seek approval for the intervention with Congress, even though he ‘doesn’t have to’:

“As commander in chief, I always preserve the right and the responsibility to act on behalf of America’s national security. I do not believe that I was required to take this to Congress,” Obama said in a press conference Wednesday.

Although Obama claims striking Syria is in the interest of U.S. national security, it would seem more likely to undermine it. Iran has already threatened to retaliate against Israel and other Western targets if and when the U.S. bombs Syria. Both Russia and China have said there will be catastrophic consequences for any U.S. military action in Syria.

It certainly cannot be argued that Syria poses any kind of imminent threat to the U.S., something that candidate Obama once emphasized was necessary for U.S. military intervention back in 2007:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

He’s certainly singing a different tune now. Even though this action is wildly unpopular with an overwhelming majority of Americans against striking Syria, a House Democratic aide told Politico:

At the end of the day, a lot of these Democrats are going to be with the president because the choice is to vote against [the Syria intervention] and turn the president into a lame duck and destroy his credibility, or swallow it and vote for something that you’re not wild about. When you’re faced with that kind of decision, most of these fence-sitters are going to come aboard.

The president has already lost credibility by claiming a military intervention in Syria will be tailored and limited, then before Congress even has a chance to actually vote, he has already broadened the limits of the supposed limited strike.

But is the president’s credibility really the most important issue at this point when World War III is at stake?

Obama has already lost all credibility on the national stage with regard to abusing executive power (read: Fast and Furious scandal, Benghazi cover-up, IRS targeting conservative groups and the absurd justification for the sweeping NSA big brother spynet just to name a few). When it comes to lost credibility, the president’s Syrian warmongering is the political equivalent to beating a horse that’s been dead for a long, long time.

Contributed by Melissa Melton of The Daily Sheeple.

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media. Wake the flock up!