A long-time associate told me last Tuesday that he had written Barack Obama to tell him that the US had no business being involved in Syria and that the “intelligence” on which the possible intervention was based was sounding a lot like Colin Powell at the UN a decade ago, or the Gulf Of Tonkin stuff of 1964 or whatever other BS the American military has cooked up over the years. It now seems that several sources, including the Wall Street Journal, are pointing out the there have been admissions by Syrian rebels that it was they who deployed, perhaps by accident, chemical weapons that originated in Saudi Arabia. This leaves the US with no credibility at all, renews the idea that the Nobel folks erred seriously in awarding Obama a Peace Prize, and reframes the Syrian conflict very much as part of the Wahabist endgame of establishing the primacy of the house of Saud and the Sunni sect, as though it was worth hitting Dublin because of the Troubles in the Six Counties. Another sad aspect is that the Globe, The Star, The Vancouver Sun and other press organs seem to be missing the shift here, not surprising as they seem to be consistent cheerleaders for war and not all that keen on providing full coverage, particularly when that coverage might short-circuit the reasons that the powers that be might have for sending people off to die so that Lockheed, Boeing, Halliburton et al can cash in yet again on misery inflicted on people all over the world.

Update:

Allison at Creekside reports…

http://creekside1.blogspot.ca/2013/09/bomb-bomb-bomb-iran-syria.html

Wanda Ballantyne over at POCLAD linked to this:

http://nsnbc.me/2013/08/28/confirmed-us-claims-against-syria-there-is-no-evidence/

…and several other articles that suggest pretty strongly that Obama, Cameron and Hollande need to step back. We’ve come to expect this from Obama, and Cameron has never been, nor has expressed any inclination to be, anything other than a cheerleader for the empire of Capital, but the Socialist-In-Name-Only Hollande has been a disappointment on pretty much everything: foreign policy and economic policy that might follow on Sarkozy in the same way that Obama seems to out-Bush good ol’ GWB, despite and conrtary to the glowing rhetoric.