Tag: news

The House
Energy and Commerce Committee issued the findings of its
months-long investigation of NHTSA’s (National Highway Traffic and
Safety Administration) handling of GM’s ignition switch debacle and
they are damning!

It turns out the agency missed the true cause of why GM’s 2005
Cobalt and its sister cars were sometimes suddenly stopping and
crashing because it did not understand the workings of the advanced
airbag systems that it had itself mandated.

Yet, instead, of begging for forgiveness for its manifest
ineptitude in protecting the drivers in whose name it exists, its
chief went before Congress last week, defiant and unrepentant, and
demanded more money for more staff.

View this article.

When President Obama committed the United States
to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as
ISIL [ISIS]” in a
speech on September 10, he promised a
body bag-weary American public that the effort “will not
involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Well,
maybe. Yesterday’s air
and missile strikes against ISIS in Syria certainly abided by
that guarantee even as it widened efforts against the murderous
group/budding shithole of a country. But the ongoing collapse of
the Iraqi Army raises the question of just who will supply
troops on the ground even as America rains death from the air.

Sunday,
hundreds of Iraqi soldiers went missing—believed dead, grabbed,
or bugged out—after their base, Camp Saqlawiyah, fell to a siege by
ISIS forces.

This isn’t the first fiasco suffered by the Iraqi Army in
opposing ISIS. The militant group has acquired modern American
weapons from fleeing Iraqi troops.
Kirkuk Air Base fell when “Iraqi forces fled, stripping off
their uniforms and discarding them in the dirt” before the enemy
even approached the place.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says

about half the Iraqi Army isn’t up to the job.

That may be why, before the bombs started falling in Syria,
former Defense Secretary Robert Gates
suggested on Sunday that “some small number of American
advisers, trainers, special forces and forward spotters for air
controllers are going to have to be in harm’s way.”

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
makes the same point, saying, “this is the hard truth—airpower
alone will not suffice.”

Some U.S. lawmakers are
ready, and even eager, to follow up on that idea.

So far, President Obama is sticking by his promise that combat
troops won’t be committed against ISIS. But if local forces
continue to flee the field when ISIS shows up, look for the
president to “reluctantly” give in to the pressure to extend
America’s involvement in an Iraq War that just won’t end.

Maybe the United States really needs to make a full-on
commitment to defeating ISIS—it’s a brutal group without doubt. But
that’s a discussion that should take place honestly, without coy
assurances of a bloodless (for Americans) conflict. And it should
be openly debated in Congress.

When President Obama committed the United States
to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as
ISIL [ISIS]” in a
speech on September 10, he promised a
body bag-weary American public that the effort “will not
involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.” Well,
maybe. Yesterday’s air
and missile strikes against ISIS in Syria certainly abided by
that guarantee even as it widened efforts against the murderous
group/budding shithole of a country. But the ongoing collapse of
the Iraqi Army raises the question of just who will supply
troops on the ground even as America rains death from the air.

Sunday,
hundreds of Iraqi soldiers went missing—believed dead, grabbed,
or bugged out—after their base, Camp Saqlawiyah, fell to a siege by
ISIS forces.

This isn’t the first fiasco suffered by the Iraqi Army in
opposing ISIS. The militant group has acquired modern American
weapons from fleeing Iraqi troops.
Kirkuk Air Base fell when “Iraqi forces fled, stripping off
their uniforms and discarding them in the dirt” before the enemy
even approached the place.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says

about half the Iraqi Army isn’t up to the job.

That may be why, before the bombs started falling in Syria,
former Defense Secretary Robert Gates
suggested on Sunday that “some small number of American
advisers, trainers, special forces and forward spotters for air
controllers are going to have to be in harm’s way.”

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair
makes the same point, saying, “this is the hard truth—airpower
alone will not suffice.”

Some U.S. lawmakers are
ready, and even eager, to follow up on that idea.

So far, President Obama is sticking by his promise that combat
troops won’t be committed against ISIS. But if local forces
continue to flee the field when ISIS shows up, look for the
president to “reluctantly” give in to the pressure to extend
America’s involvement in an Iraq War that just won’t end.

Maybe the United States really needs to make a full-on
commitment to defeating ISIS—it’s a brutal group without doubt. But
that’s a discussion that should take place honestly, without coy
assurances of a bloodless (for Americans) conflict. And it should
be openly debated in Congress.

Article One, Section Eight of the U.S.
Constitution vests the power “to declare war” in the hands of
Congress. But as the world now knows, President Barack Obama took
it upon himself last night to launch an undeclared
war against ISIS in Syria. Just like President George W. Bush
before him, Obama believes his vast war powers as commander in
chief trump whatever old-fashioned limitations the text of the
Constitution happens to impose on the presidency.

This is not Obama’s first undeclared war, of course. That would
be his 2011 war in Libya, which he also launched after refusing to
obtain congressional authorization as required by the Constitution.
Nor is it Obama’s only unilateral exercise of unprecedented
executive power. That
list of
misdeeds is
growing too long to summarize in a short blog post. As Obama
himself
bragged in January 2014, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a
phone…. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take
executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball
forward.”

Perhaps our next president will keep a copy of the Constitution
on his desk as well.

Article One, Section Eight of the U.S.
Constitution vests the power “to declare war” in the hands of
Congress. But as the world now knows, President Barack Obama took
it upon himself last night to launch an undeclared
war against ISIS in Syria. Just like President George W. Bush
before him, Obama believes his vast war powers as commander in
chief trump whatever old-fashioned limitations the text of the
Constitution happens to impose on the presidency.

This is not Obama’s first undeclared war, of course. That would
be his 2011 war in Libya, which he also launched after refusing to
obtain congressional authorization as required by the Constitution.
Nor is it Obama’s only unilateral exercise of unprecedented
executive power. That
list of
misdeeds is
growing too long to summarize in a short blog post. As Obama
himself
bragged in January 2014, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a
phone…. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take
executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball
forward.”

Perhaps our next president will keep a copy of the Constitution
on his desk as well.

It’s been clear for years that Washington would
eventually bomb Syria; the only real question was which side
it would pick. Now that that’s
settled, Daniel Drezner offers an
observation:

The United States has been
conducting hundreds of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in
[Iraq] for the past month. In contrast to Syria, there are actual
ground forces in Iraq with an interest in reclaiming territory. So,
in many ways, Iraq is an easier test of the effect of U.S. air
power on changing the balance of power on the ground. And yet,
according to The New York Times’s David Kirkpatrick and Omar
Al-Jawoshy, things
haven’t changed all that much in Iraq: “After six weeks of
American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely
budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on
more than a quarter of the country.” Given that it will be months
before the Free Syrian Army receives any training, the evidence
from the Iraq campaign does not bode well for any immediate success
in Syria.

Daniel Larison offers a
forecast:

Obama has embarked on a military campaign that will
consume and thoroughly discredit the remaining years of his
presidency. I suspect that the public will sooner or later sour on
a war that was originally sold as a brief and limited operation,
and their support for an air campaign will wane as it becomes
apparent that the war cannot achieve its stated goal. Even if that
doesn’t happen, Obama will still be responsible for committing the
U.S. to exactly the sort of unnecessary and open-ended war that he
was expected to oppose.

It’s been clear for years that Washington would
eventually bomb Syria; the only real question was which side
it would pick. Now that that’s
settled, Daniel Drezner offers an
observation:

The United States has been
conducting hundreds of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in
[Iraq] for the past month. In contrast to Syria, there are actual
ground forces in Iraq with an interest in reclaiming territory. So,
in many ways, Iraq is an easier test of the effect of U.S. air
power on changing the balance of power on the ground. And yet,
according to The New York Times’s David Kirkpatrick and Omar
Al-Jawoshy, things
haven’t changed all that much in Iraq: “After six weeks of
American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely
budged the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on
more than a quarter of the country.” Given that it will be months
before the Free Syrian Army receives any training, the evidence
from the Iraq campaign does not bode well for any immediate success
in Syria.

Daniel Larison offers a
forecast:

Obama has embarked on a military campaign that will
consume and thoroughly discredit the remaining years of his
presidency. I suspect that the public will sooner or later sour on
a war that was originally sold as a brief and limited operation,
and their support for an air campaign will wane as it becomes
apparent that the war cannot achieve its stated goal. Even if that
doesn’t happen, Obama will still be responsible for committing the
U.S. to exactly the sort of unnecessary and open-ended war that he
was expected to oppose.