Just what the Pentagon wants. And nothing more. For now. Broadway Theater, script collaboration by This Town Productions.

I believe that the Cyber Command is going to make its debut in a hot war in Syria. I’m not sure what our laws or Constitution or international law say about cyberwar, or whether this AUMF will address it in some way, but it would not surprise me if it does.

This is all speculation on my part, but there was a huge amount of propaganda about the Syrian Electronic Army, which, from the minute I read about it, smelled like something that we or one of our allies very sophisticated in cyberwar cooked up, to soften up the public to the idea of using our cyber army in a hot war. The name is a goofy, propaganda-like term, targeting a wide audience, including those who are not very tech savvy. They went after a target that everyone in the world would know about. The timing was very convenient, launched when everyone in the world was paying attention and the war propaganda was in overdrive.

Personally, I was only slightly suspicious at first, and then something else happened. A young woman named Andrea Peterson who writes for “The Switch”, a technology/policy blog in the WaPo, wrote this story, also at the height of the propaganda period:

Here’s how one hacker is waging war on the Syrian government

The American, who identified himself with the pseudonym “Oliver Tucket,” contacted me over the weekend. He shared copies of two Syrian government documents he said he had gleaned from a hacked server. The shy, earnest, clean-cut young professional of about 30 says he doesn’t have any specific ties to the Syrian conflict but was upset about the actions of the Syrian government and wanted to embarrass the Assad regime.

Online attacks have become one more front in modern warfare. But the Internet’s global reach gives those cyber battles a more freewheeling character than conventional warfare. Smart hackers around the world can insert themselves into volatile situations to embarrass enemies, draw attention to pet causes, or cause mischief.
Tucket says he was surprised at just how weak the Syrian regime’s network defenses were. Evidently, as the government has become overwhelmed with the country’s raging civil war, network security hasn’t been a priority. And with the U.S. government on the brink of launching airstrikes in the country, the security of Syria’s IT systems might not be improved any time soon.

So who does this hactivist patriot remind you of?

The existing AUMF concerning “those who attacked the US on 9/11” would already allow Obama to go into Syria … but only on Assad’s side. He wants another AUMF so he can be on the other side, too.

The prescience of that Nobel committee is more and more impressive every day.

@emptywheel: MTWheel, I think joanneleon was suggesting this Oliver Tucket seemed like a crude attempt at a Snowden foil, one working for “our” side. If this was South Park, the evil one would have a little black goatee. I’m not sure if Eddie’s facial hair qualifies him for SP evil guy from the alternate universe.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2013/09/the-kerrys-dining-out-with-the-thug-and-murderer-anf-his-missus.html

Like that old joke says, “How do you tell when a liar is lying?”

President Obama claims he only wants to engage in limited strikes. He has promised there would be no boots (aside from JSOC and CIA ones, presumably) on the ground.

But he has proposed something that could be potentially far broader.

“His lips are moving”

USS San Antonio moves off of Syria

“So what should we say about a country that gasses their own people?”

This is what is known as begging the question.
Is there any evidence that the government of Syria used chemical weapons? If there is, then let it be tested in a “court”. The United Nations could be used or the matter could be referred to The Hague.

The truth is that, over the years, allegations of this sort have been routinely discovered to be false. To use false evidence to justify the killing of a single person (even if that person be foreign and non Caucasian) amounts to wilful murder.
What would be your response to an accusation that you are actively promoting killing?

@chris harries:
maybe the events at the Boston Marathon changed my views.
I’m a runner and the bombing really pissed me off.
I personally hate war an am sick of the Middle east constant killings.
I also think that I’m a realist and just don’t have the answers.
I also voted for Obama and respect his decision-making.
I want a vote

the nytimes has this reportage which expresses matters in a far more genteel manner than i have:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/president-pulls-lawmakers-into-box-he-made.html?hp&_r=0

mcclatchey has this bit of whitehouse-ology:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/31/200963/obama-risks-embarrassing-loss.html#.UiNxlBXD93A

i’m not sure mccl is looking thru the right end of the telescope.

here is wapo’s report (“we dont want congress to have their cake and eat it too”) ???? :

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/syria-debate-in-oval-office-focused-on-whether-to-put-a-military-strike-before-congress/2013/08/31/cd78c6c6-11b3-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

@emptywheel: Just to clarify, I don’t think that contact actually was Snowden but I think it was modeled after Snowden and was probably a persona cooked up by us or one of our allies.

@emptywheel: Also the rumor is that cyber attacks will accompany and enhance the cruise missile attacks by messing with the Syrian air defense. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but there it is. I’m not very knowledgeable about cruise missile strikes or air defense systems. I know they are based on GPS coordinates but that’s about it. I don’t know if Syria has some kind of missile shield of their own that can hit cruise missiles and if that is what they’re talking about when they say they’ll manipulate Assad’s air defense systems. I figured that the air defense was used more for aircraft. Obama claims that the strike is going to be limited in size and scope and the things I’ve read say no aircraft. But I wonder about that. We won’t use any drones? Won’t use any of the fighter jets that are now in Jordan? Messing with his air defense systems would make more sense if we planned to use those.

And all in all, you have to wonder if this is a real life test/demonstration of a combined military force and cyber command coordinated mission in a hot war. I get the sense that there would be a number of people who would be very excited to do something like that, and show it off to the world.

@joanneleon: Who does he remind me of? The guy who delivered the supposed Government of Niger yellowcake letter to the media.

@JTMinIA: Except for the minor and convenient detail that the US rescinded its signature on the Rome Statute that created the ICC. They are still under the illusion that that is their get-out-of-jail card. Well that and the largest military force in the world.

@emptywheel:
Good analysis but don’t you think Obama has all this info and much more than us.
Kerry gave a good briefing in my opinion.
We elected the Prez to make these decisions and I’m putting my faith in Obama.
We also elected Congress to weigh in.
Let’s debate the issue and go from there.

@Bay State Librul: From the beginning I have wondered: is Assad really such a moron as to conduct a chemical attack while the inspectors are in Syria? To what advantage? The government has the opposition out manned and out gunned by a wide margin. Why do the one thing that has the potential to turn around your tactical advantage?

The other thing that made this seem reminiscent of Iraq was that the case was made early on which supposedly pointed to the guilt of the Syrian government. The claim was that Assad had put off answering the call to allow inspectors to the site. The truth was very different, Assad was not given the written request until Saturday and the positive response was delivered on Monday. Maybe as few as 36 hours and in any case no where near the reported 5 days. In addition, Obama’s statement about not wanting to wait for the UN inspectors to complete their investigation. Talk about dejavu. Brought me back to Bush and the Iraq invasion.

It doesn’t seem that a handful of cruise missiles will make a big dif to Assad. But it will surely wipe out some number of innocent civilians. A larger attack will lead us down the road to a greater conflict, maybe WWIII (Iran and Syria have a pact to help the other if either is attacked). In any case, it would entail fighting in the cause of al Qaeda. Regarding punitive strike(s), I just don’t see any positives. Too weak, and it will send the wrong message. Too strong, and we’re stuck in another 10 years of war. We can forget about schools, bridges, medicare, unemployment, Head Start, etc. Which if I figure correctly, “our” elites would love this scenario, huge profits for the defense industry and less than nothing for the rest of us.

Imho, if is determined with certainty that Assad is behind the gassing, the world should be involved and charges should be filed at the Hague. This gives all the participating member states in the International Court an obligation to apprehend Assad and bring him to trial.

@orionATL: It is possible, as shown by the breakdown of some large nation-states and federations, that that species is no longer a likely evolutionary development.
Worldwide instant information exchange, used by transnational corporations, instant translations assisting private interactions, and some fracturing of one of the world’s largest, most polyglot nation-state, are factors involved.
Balkanisation is likely to affect large, populous nations. Such entities as the EEU are shaky at best, and we may expect them to fragment in many ways.
Many modern nations exist due to de facto colonisation – exploitation of natural resources outside their boundaries. Since easy resource exploitation is over, from minerals to wild food organisms, growth economies are essentially headed for a fall.
We might claim that technological sophistication can continue to overcome these problems, but the world’s most populous economies have just begun to drain and compete energy sources with highest returns on energy.
Since up to 90% of commercial fish stocks are now gone, and fishing down the food chain has reached tiny organisms- krill, etc., this source which kept armies mobile since late medieval times, is over. While forests may not be used as much as previous to late industrial revolution, claims that it will regrow are likely still false, and the 50 to 90+% losses will not likely to regrow under the press of overbloomed humanity (Africa has past 14 times the population it did 100 years ago, and even the USa has over4x) , fast climate change is burning up low latitude forests, which will not return quickly.Humans directly use some 40% of photosynthesis on earth, and the hugest issue before climate change was, and still is, topsoil loss.
Topsoil loss and degradation (podzolization, pollution, and sequestration – covering land with asphalt, concrete, and other aggregate disallowing biotic growth) is serious beyond what lay person understand. irrigation farming leads to salted soil, and no crop remains as nutritious or fertile as it was over 50 years ago.
Thus the present human population, so often projected to increase by two more China-size nations, has already so stressed and overexploited earth’s capacities that a more likely prediction is down from the present size.
Impoverished ecosystems become unstable and fail, breaking down into simpler fragments.
None of this is catastrophe, but will merely lead to a reduction in human overpopulation.
While we have millions fighting malaria and the faster-emerging viruses of crowd diseases, there are many more ways for our supporting ecosystems to break down. I have listed a very few.
Water is often mentioned as “scarce” or limited, and teh crazed ideas of bringing water from the Columbia R., Canada, and Great Lakes, uphill and across vast distances to the Southwest desert cities (SoCal and AZ) has already been rejected by those occupying source areas. Vast water projects, aside from largely being used for irrigation, the reason that ancient city-states are now under the sand due to salt pollution (Egypt made the grave mistake of building Aswan High Dam, and is beginning to suffer the consequences of cessation of the Nile’s once-yearly silting of that naturally-recurring rich bottomland. Mesopotamia is no longer recharged due to upstream water use. There is much more on related losses for the present civilisation). Estuaries, the richest nurseries of ocean species have been eradicated for human housing, port and farms, and are lost until very large shoreline changes occur without human re-exploitation.
Most of you will not easily detect the problems in your urban and industrial economic focus, and will only suffer through the increasing strife of competition for resources. This is already occurring, resulting in greater social stratification in these involuted societies.
Did you know that, like so many other species, humans increase their reproduction under predatory stress? Our main predatory stress has long been war. Think Baby Boom. The average age over in the war-torn nations of South Asia tends to be more like 14 than our much older age elsewhere.
Although I have a background in psychology, I will not here go into what happens under population stress, except to say the suicide, as in suicide bombers and youth eager to suicide through warfare, increases. I am not certain that our progress toward greater human civility will continue, for reasons of stress. 1/4 of adult reproductive women in the US take a mood -altering drug.
There’s more, far more, but the likelihood of evolution from tribal to nation status may not ever have been more than a short, limited aberration, as we are only adapted to deal with a very specific limited number of others, before heuristics like generalisation, strong self-interest bias, stereotyping, and others, cause social fragmentation.

@Bay State Librul:
“I do believe Emptywheel since she does her due diligence and spends hours on her job.
I do believe John Kerry.
I do believe Obama”

Congratulations, you have mastered doublethink. To get there you have successfully assimilated blackwhite, duckspeak and other elements of newspeak.

George Orwell would not be pleased, nor would he be surprised. B.B. B.O. Mox nix.

We’ve just finished Hate Week.

What nuance is there in: “[The Congress shall have Power…] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water”? Why should there be nuance in that unambiguous prohibition of unilateral executive decisions to start wars?

What nuance is there in: “I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization”?

EW and others, in addition to your lit prof, give you plenty of reason to doubt.

Be careful, even though it trivializes the issues, considering that there might be a flash of truth on the “other” side is crimethink. Better engage crimestop before it is too late.

Remember how Bradley Manning was putting lives at risk by revealing war crimes? Now the same Crew of neo-nazis who lied us into wars, such as Elliot Abrams and Dougie Feith (stupidest humanoid in this quadrant of the galaxy) are leading from the front into new wars.

Barack Obama is putting American lives at risk. And so is John McCain who is a war lunatic. These, and the other neo-cons are endangering Americans and Syrians with their reckless falsehoods and secret armies. So they tell the Presdient what to do. He does it as he leads from the back. John McCain wants our enemies, Al Qaeda to rule Syria.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/02/obama-syria-john-mccain_n_3855206.html

“It can’t just be, in my view, pinprick cruise missiles,” the Arizona Republican told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

In an interview with an Israeli television network, he said Obama has “encouraged our enemies” by effectively punting his decision to Congress.

@Bay State Librul:
What does that mean? Crazy McCain is not any kind of military or moral authority. How many chances to you get to cause reckless bloody adventures, endlessly and with no purpose as Crazy has.

Then Crazy says cruise missles are a “pinprick”. And he claims Barack Obama is encouraging enemies. For a President to encourage enemies might be considered treason.

So you are a fan of John McCain and cannot tolerate criticism of his outstanding military record?

I am not a combat “Ace” as is McCain. McCain destroyed five aircraft, which makes him an Ace. Of course they were US aircraft. And McCain wants more destroyed American aircraft for more war.

So what is your problem or was that snark?

@Mauimom: upvoted!

Al Nusra rebels seems to be an Al Qaeda “affiliate”. Those two amigas, McCain and Lindsey want the “rebels” to win. And that means “decisive” US military attacks. But maybe Syria might choose to fight and create more casualties.

And does McCain support Al Qaeda? There is no Al Qaeda. It was a secret army created by Ollie North. Bin Laden, Riggs Bank, Graham Fuller, Operation Gladio, these are all contrived pretexts for more war. These Syrian atrocities are an elaborate hoax of one form or another.

Recall how angry the President was, when the elaborate hoax or ruse, of Undie Bomber #2, was discovered. The Undie #2 double agent could not be used again, so Obama went Full Metal Bush against AP.

We will always have Benghazi, MANPADS to Al Nusra?

@lefty665:
I had a Black Crown beer and one Heiniken.
Not sure if you like beer but would offer you a drink if you we’re closer, not sure where you live

@David of Our World Report:
I was against Iraq invasion. Not sure you can equate the two situations.There are similarities but also differences.
I think you are saying the country is sick of war and I am sick of war too.
My issue is let’s take a vote, and either punt or do what our elected Reps decide.
I think that’s the democratic way.

@Bay State Librul: You get this way or I that and we’ll tip a couple.