NOT THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM!

It took a few years for him to be exposed...but President Obama has now proved it. Finally in the first few months of his second term we can conclude: HE IS NOT THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE ROOM, as some have claimed. Though what "rooms" he was entering and who populated them still remains a good question. But today, the pile up of second term scandals speak for themselves; with Obama at the helm, his administration has staggered from one crisis to another---the IRA scandal, the NSA scandal, the embarrassing Snowdon fiasco, perfidious behavior concerning Egypt's coup, the distortions and untruths he mouthed about domestic and world wide-spying, and now this---the Syria catastrophe.

Looking back on his predecessor, one begins to think perhaps Obama's IQ is not much higher than old GWB, a proven dummy. Furthermore, the administration's crises are too often of this President's own making such as his distortions on NSA spying and his loose lips on the civil war in Syria (his first mistake on that score). On Syria, in a too casual speech, he drew a line in the sand that foolishly boxed him in to "do something" if Syria used chemical weapons. In making that statement he put the ball in Assad's hands and Assad's enemies too. Had he just kept his mouth shut he might have still appeared "presidential". Now he appears ready to go off half-cocked, with no UN cover, and with a mere 9% of the nation supporting his belligerent Bush-like actions. He couldn't even drag along the UK's blustering David Cameron, whose Parliament wisely denied their PM support for this stupidity. At home, his loose speech has handed his opponents a cudgel to strike him with:"he's a wimp. He did not act decisively". So to appear "decisive" he has rattled sabers, has sent warships to the MED and threatens cruise missile-attacks on Syria.

Were Mr Obama really as smart as he thinks, he would have waited for the key question regarding this Sarin gas tragedy to be answered first. WHO RELEASED THE GAS? To mete out lethal punishment, we-the USA--must have that question answered clearly and decisively. We need more than the bluster of dusty old Joe Biden to reassure us. If we strike a nation with devastating effect, killing innocent civilians, and others as Obama would do, (for "humanitarian reasons") without the UN, and without the moral authority of well-established facts on who used the gas, we are simply as evil as the other "bad guys" in the world, and are simply falling back into a form of "Bush-behavior" we rejected so overwhelmingly in the last two elections. Being a powerful, but ill informed, law-breaking, bully nation is not my image of America.

On the question of who committed this act..we have little to go on. But motivation may point the finger at some possible culprits. One must ask, who would gain from such a tragedy? The unbiased observer finds blaming Assad, unlikely. Why would he do it? To bring down promised cruise missiles on his palace? Not likely. Assad, with the help of Iran, Russia and Hezbollah is presently, if slowly, winning the civil war. He would have no reason to use chemical weapons and undermine his recent successes. (And perhaps that fact--the war turning in Assad's favor--may be the single element which underlies the sinister motivations of this whole affair) On the other hand, those on the "loosing" side, al Qaida, various jihadists, the Israelis, the Saudi princes, and others have the clear motivation and opportunity to hand over to the Syrian insurgents a few, perhaps diluted, Sarin gas canisters with the evil hope that their use would, given the President's foolish line drawing statement, present the USA and its allies with a causus belli. So whether Obama has been hoodwinked into this fiasco, or stumbled into it stupidly, or schemed it up himself, it is still dumb. It is unconscionable for a nation in our present financial situation to spend billions on ill advised and unwarranted warfare, when our own populous is suffering so grievously. Think of it, just the funds expended to SEND our fleet to the MED (cash by the way, which we do not have and must borrow)would more than solve the awful fiscal problems for millions of people in Detroit!

This kind of ill-conceived belligerency is not what we expected from a seemingly smart guy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a legal scholar. The progressives in this nation who elected Mr. Obama expected more than just a black face in the White House. But that is all it seems that we got for our efforts. The faces and skin tones of our leadership changed after the election, but our nation under Obama continues on its self destructive course.

Get the picture?

Rjk