September 7, 2014

President Obama is going to announce his strategy to contend with ISIS this week, so naturally Bloody Bill Kristol used the occasion to demand that we start air raids in Syria, consequences be damned, and for the U.S. to put "boots on the ground."

I'm still waiting to find out when Kristol is going to volunteer himself and his family members to go on over there and strap on a gun, instead of being allowed to pontificate week after week about the messes he and his neocon cohorts helped to create.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Bill Kristol, it doesn't seem like there's all much that daylight on the substance between the president now and his critics.

KRISTOL: Look, I think he'd have huge Republican support if he was more aggressive. I hope he gives a strong speech Wednesday, but most of all I hope -- and I think most Republicans hope -- he does things. And what one worries about with this president is that he sometimes uses speeches as an excuse for avoiding action instead of to lay the predicate for real action. If he's laying the predicate for taking the war to Syria, which is absolutely Syria to seriously degrade and destroy ISIS, and if he--

STEPHANOPOULOS: Even if it helps Assad?

KRISTOL: Yeah, it might help Assad a little in the short-term, though Assad has collaborated with ISIS in destroying actually the more moderate Syrians. But if ISIS is the threat it is, then it is, we'll deal with one threat at a time. And you just can't destroy and degrade and destroy ISIS enough without going after them in Syria.

But his Secretary of State John Kerry said this week the absolute -- the red line -- he used that term -- it's a red line to not have boots on the ground. That's not serious.

A, we are going to have boots on the ground. You can't have serious bombing campaigns unless you have advisers in there. And secondly, you can't move that out ahead of time. So I want to see the president say this needs to be a serious speech.

Yeah, so it helps Assad. No big deal. Until it backfires that is and then it will all be Obama's fault if he listens to him.

We've got advisers in there now, but Americans are not going to tolerate some large scale deployment back into Iraq or Syria for that matter, not matter how much the neocons like Kristol are clamoring for it.

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