Fox’s fire-breathing Obama hater, retired Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, joined America’s Newsroom today where he accused President Obama of deliberately trying not to kill terrorists in the American-led airstrikes in Syria. Not even host Bill Hemmer seemed to buy it.
It’s not as though Peters offered any real evidence of Obama’s strategy and it’s not at all likely Peters has any entrée into Obama’s inner circle. No, the retired colonel based this round of attacks on Obama on his general understanding of military operations.
The media was so enraptured with dramatic footage of the cruise missile launches and the before and after photos that they missed the fundamental point: that Obama had restrictions on this air operation – to minimize not just civilian but to minimize terrorist casualties. He didn’t want bloodshed, so we attacked in the middle of the night.
Now, the only reason you’d attack in the middle of the night is that there’s a forbidding air defense complex and you are worried about it. There were no air defenses in the areas we attacked.
Hemmer – no Obama apologist – suggested the timing might have been part of some kind of “cooperation with Damascus.” He cited a quote from a Syrian government minister saying that the strikes were “proceeding in the right direction” and suggested that maybe nighttime was the only time Damascus approved.
Peters insisted otherwise. “No, absolutely wrong. Sorry, Bill. Damascus has no say in this. They don’t get a say. …We let them know we were coming so they were smart and didn’t turn their radars on.”
Of course, officially, Syria has no say but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any conferring. But even if Peters is right on that score, how on earth would Peters know the strategy behind attacking at night? He continued:
No, we went in the middle of the night because that way the buildings were empty and President Obama didn’t want to hurt any terrorists. In the middle of the night, you blow out windows, you knock down antennas. …If you wanted to hurt the Islamic state terrorists, militants, would have been ten or eleven in the morning.
Well, except we almost certainly did hurt terrorists. As CNN reported, we’ve probably already killed one terrorist leader, albeit not an Islamic State terrorist. Furthermore, CNN noted, “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 70 ISIS militants were killed and more than 300 were wounded. But CNN and other news outlets were unable to confirm the figures.” None of that was mentioned by Hemmer.
Also, the airstrikes are only the beginning of a prolonged campaign. Who knows when and what will be targeted later on? President Obama might will have had good, tactical reasons for starting the way he did. Hemmer didn’t seem to think of that, either.
(H/T reader Gene B.)
He’s also the Curtis Lemay of our era, absolutely swimming in blood lust. Thank God he’s no longer in the military.
Tonight he was on Dobbs — again — and this was the first gem that came out of his ugly mouth, about Obama’s really fantastic and almost brutally tough U.N. speech: “I’ve got to give the president credit. That was the finest speech ever given by a liberal arts grad student pretending to be president of the United States.”
Fucking traitors! And they think they’re more patriotic than we (on the left) are. You can wave the flag around all you want – that doesn’t make you patriotic.
