Total Vote Count Last Updated: September 6, 1:35 p.m:
Firm Yea: 29 Lean Yea: 31
Lean Nay: 128 Firm Nay: 105
The illegality of a US attack on Syria is clear. The UN Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of political independence of any state.” The UN Security Council has not authorized an action. Congress has not declared war or even passed a use-of-force resolution, the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Treaty of Paris both outlaw war as a means of settling disputes and the Nuremberg Charter forbids planning any war of aggression.
Further, as Dennis Kucinich's article 'Top 10 Unproven Claims for War Against Syria' there are many unanswered questions about the 'intelligence' that Obama is using to support his rush to war. There are other options, legal options under international law, but they are being ignored by the war-mongers in Washington and their lackeys.
Of course speculations about why Obama is pushing so hard instead of pursuing charges against Assad at the International Criminal Court run rampant on the Internet. IMO a good place to start looking is their own illegal drone murders of innocents, kidnapping and indefinite detention, warrant-less spying at home and abroad, Gitmo, refusal to get rid of its own stockpile of banned weapons, etc. In reality the US doesn't have a moral leg to stand on in response to any use chemical weapons of such by Syria.
For one thing U.S. policy appears to be that while it is legitimate for its allies Israel and Egypt to have chemical weapons Syria must not. Remember that Egypt used phosgene and mustard gas in the mid-1960s during its intervention in Yemen’s civil war without a whimper from the US or its lackeys. Then there's the fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention by inspecting laboratories, factories, and arsenals, and oversees the destruction of chemical weapons is prohibited from inspecting the US's facilities.
The Middle East has a long and sordid history of chemical weapon usage. The first country to use them in the Middle East was Great Britain in 1920, as part of its efforts to put down a rebellion by Iraqi tribesmen when British forces seized the country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Then during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s the Iraqis used banned chemical agents supplied by the US to kill 20,000 Iranian soldiers and cause tens of thousands of long-term injuries when US 'intelligence' told Saddam where the Iranian troops were. Saddam went on, in 1988 in the northern Iraqi city of Halabja, to massacre up to 5,000 Kurdish civilians with those same chemical weapons provided by the US. The United States continued sending aid to Iraq even after the regime’s use of poison gas was confirmed.
Then there's napalm, another chemical weapon the US had no qualms about using extensively for years in Vietnam. And don't forget that the US is the only country ever to use the ultimate weapon of mass destruction - atomic bombs - against the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The US has gone from being that 'shining city on the hill' to losing all credibility and becoming the most hated, feared and distrusted country on earth in my lifetime. Obama could perhaps turn global opinion somewhat if he were to listen to the opposition then, after losing the vote in the House of Representatives, climb down and press for charges at the International Criminal Court. Further he could announce a huge relief effort for the two million Syrian refugees and set an example by destroying the US's huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weaponry then calling on Russia, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Britain, etc. to follow suit.
