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Washington DC Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton says that if Democrats vote for the air strike on Syria, it will only be to help President Obama save face.
Even though Norton admitted that she does not think military action by the United States is a good idea, she would still vote yes – if she was a voting member — out of loyalty to the president.
“I think it will be like the red line crap,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, a non-voting member, said. “I think once you say ‘I’m going to Congress’ you can’t just go ahead and do it [airstrike] anyway. [President Obama will] be in real trouble if he goes ahead and does it anyway. I can say, that if he gets saved at all, I think it will be because of loyalty of Democrats that just don’t want to see him shamed and embarrassed on the national stage. At the moment, that is the only reason I would vote for it.”
Meanwhile, two European men — one a journalist and the other a teacher — claim they were held captive in Syria and overhead an English-language SKYPE conversation that places blame on the Syrian rebels – and not the Syrian government – for the chemical attack. The men were reportedly captured in April and released in September.
“In this conversation, they said that the gas attack on two neighborhoods of Damascus was launched by the rebels as a provocation to lead the West to intervene militarily,” Domenico Quirico, one of the men who was captured, told an Italian newspaper. “We were unaware of everything that was going on during our detention in Syria, and therefore also with the gas attack in Damascus.”
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If the story told by the alleged captives is accurate, the Syrian rebels behind the gassing of hundreds of innocent civilians did so specifically so the West would intercede – and it’s close to working.
Domenico Quirico added, “I am extremely surprised that the United States could think about intervening, knowing very well how the Syrian revolution has become international jihadism – in other words Al-Qaeda. They want to create a caliphate and extend it to the entire Middle East and North Africa. … There needs to be a long period of reflection.”
The other man who was captured, Pierre Piccinin, said from what they heard in the Skype conversation, the Bashar al-Assad government was not behind the sarin gas attack in Damascus.
The men said their capture was horrific.
“There was sometimes real violence…humiliation, bullying, mock executions…Domenico faced two mock executions, with a revolver,” Pierre Piccinin told a Belgium radio station.
The vote on Syria may not be the last time that Obama and Congress face off in the next few weeks. Unless Congress approves a continuing resolution by October 1, the federal government will shut down. Just a few weeks after this budgetary vote, Congress will again have to decide whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.
As previously reported by Off The Grid News, Obama is using the “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting general welfare” statute to deny United States military members the pay raise dictated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index. Critics say if America cannot afford to give our armed forces the raise they have earned and were promised, spending $1.5 million a piece for 100 or more missiles to drop on Syria is fiscally irresponsible.
