Turkey wants to see Syrian Head Bashir Assad removed from power. Turkey made the decision in 2012 to put it’s full support behind the Syrian Rebels who evolved into what is now ISIS. These facts will not easily disappear just because they are uncomfortable admissions for the current U.S. administration.
Turkey, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not a free western secular nation, nor do they draw distinct seperation from ISIS objectives in that regard. The same Turkey who would not participate in the rescue of the Yazidi people in the Northern Iraq mountains, is the same Turkey who will not commit to the elimination of ISIS.
Western media attempt to obfuscate the NATO country of responsibility under the auspices of their reluctance being attached to Turkish prisoners being held captive by ISIS fighters. But honest reviews of the behavior of Turkey in relationship to Syria would evidence a greater alignment with ISIS than any moderate Islamic entity. It was Turkey who coordinated the arming of the ISIS jihadists in 2012/2013 and coordinated the flow of U.S. weapons in that regard.
This ideological alignment is why Turkey refused to join a communique with Arab nations to distance themselves from ISIS and the Sunni extremists, and it is not without notice that Erdogan and President Obama hold similar views and internal dispositions.
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — Arab nations vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to confront and ultimately destroy the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The promise came after the nations’ foreign ministers met here behind closed doors with Secretary of State John Kerry.
A joint communiqué issued by the United States and 10 Arab states endorsed a broad strategy to stop the flow of volunteers to ISIS, curtail its financing and provide aid to communities that had been “brutalized” by the militants. (more…)

Tonight at 9:00pm Eastern President Obama will deliver a speech to the nation outlining his strategy to defeat a rising Islamic terror threat known as ISIS. Oddly some of the speech has already been leaked by the White House:
UPDATE – FULL SPEECH VIDEO:

FULL WH TRANSCRIPTION OF SPEECH HERE

“With a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat. Our objective is clear: we will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy.

I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

Rather, it is a “counter-terrorism campaign” that “will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground,” he will say. It’s a strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, and is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years”.

It was only a few weeks ago, August 9th, when President Obama told the New York Times it was/is “a fantasy” to support “moderates” within Syria and expect them to be able to defeat radical Sunni Islamists.  Now, it appears, he is reversing course and saying the previous “fantasy” will be his specific approach. (more…)

MSNBC trying to lower expectations for tonight’s POTUS pontifications: “the country is already there, no need to rally the people”.
However, by admitting the President is behind the American people – MSNBC is actually confirming President Obama’s weakness, he leads from behind.

– You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up –

Obama’s Syria / ISIS  Plan:

√ Step One – Tell New York Times :  “It’s always been a fantasy,” he said, “this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.”

√ Step Two – Go Golfing (vacation)

√ Step Three –  Interrupt vacation – Tell Media it’s horrible to see U.S. Journalists beheaded.

√ Step Four – More Golf.

√ Step Five –  End vacation – Announce you have no plan/strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria.

√ Step Six  – Conduct Polling

√ Step Seven – Apologize for golfing while U.S. journalists are beheaded by ISIS, and announce goal to develop a plan to deal with ISIS in Syria – details later.

√ Step Eight –  Review Polling Data – Keep results super secret.

√ Step Nine –  Call in MSNBC contributors to assemble sales pitch to deal with ISIS.

√ Step Ten  –  Construct marketing plan to sell the previously dismissed approach.  We will now “provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth.” in Syria.

√ Step Eleven –  Call in congressional leadership to inform them his MSNBC team has “got this” plan, are ready to sell it, and he doesn’t need congress. (link)

Step Twelve – Tell American electorate in prime-time speech to the nation how providing arms to the “moderate Syrian forces” will insure success in Syria.

(more…)

We pointed this out last night and apparently it was so brutally obvious even Andrea Mitchell had to admit it:

The bigger story is actually who is not present. Within the list of the absent you can identify President Obama’s approach. (more…)

Yesterday we noted that CNN had buried their poll reflecting vast unfavorable public opinion of President Obama.
Indeed, even though the poll was taken by CNN/ORC they didn’t even provide the raw poll data that’s customarily available. Instead they couched their perspective on the information inside an article discussing Syria and ISIS:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.

Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

Setting aside the fact that oddly 30% of Americans think President Obama has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS – after he said last week he did not have a strategy for ISIS – we can only assume 30% of those polled don’t watch or read the news.  I digress…
Occasionally serendipity steps into the room and provides an opportunity to expand on the discussion. This time serendipity is an MRC Study released yesterday which takes an empirical and historical look at media reported polling for President Obama (2014) vs. President Bush (2006). The results are as eye-opening as they are staggering.
(MRC) It’s no secret that television news has long been addicted to public opinion polls; decades ago, all three broadcast networks decided to partner with an influential newspaper (ABC News with the Washington Post; CBS News with the New York Times; and NBC News with the Wall Street Journal) to sponsor their own regular surveys for use in their political coverage. (more…)

Do you remember when President Obama was debating Mitt Romney and he said this:

Well check out the list of advisors attending tonights’ Think Tank dinner:
We are doomed. RT @Bridget_PJM: The let’s-strategize-on-ISIS dinner list tonight, via the White House pic.twitter.com/kJI02cdBhI
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) September 9, 2014
(more…)

If you wanted to find a copy of the CNN/ORC Poll that Jake Tapper referenced during his Monday evening “The Lead” TV show, good luck.
Young Tapper stated the results of a CNN poll released today were “devastating to [president] Obama“. Apparently Tapper is correct because you won’t find the poll data on any CNN website.
And you won’t find any high visibility mention of it either.
If you dig far enough you’ll find an article on Syria / ISIS that references it, but that’s as far as it goes.  And if you read all the way down the article you find:

[…] Obama’s upcoming speech comes as two Americans were murdered and grisly images and stories of the terrorist group needlessly killing enemies have emerged from Iraq and Syria. So far, Americans are not happy with how Obama has addressed the ISIS situation. The CNN/ORC poll shows that only 30% of Americans think that he has a clear plan for dealing with ISIS.
Overall, the President’s approval rating is 43%, while 55% disapprove how he is handling his role as commander in chief. (link)

BINGO – Now we know why the actual poll data is missing. Candy Crowley must have it under her office cushion.
Nothing to see here folks, move along… move along.

Not to put too fine a point on it, yet knowing President Polling is going to deliver a magnanimous prime-time speech in a few days, the Syrian conversation with Chuck Todd needs, or, well, deserves a little e-x-p-a-n-s-i-o-n.

Obama will give a speech to explain the United States’ "game plan" in the fight against #ISIS. http://t.co/HdZ7A9m4qZ pic.twitter.com/zwe45HazQY

— CNN International (@cnni) September 8, 2014

During a rather revealing part of the interview between Chuck Todd and President Obama the specific issue of Syria came up surrounding ISIS.   Viewers should note in the entire dialogue it was not Obama who brought up Syria, it was Chuck Todd. (Video @9:20)
Mr. Todd even seemed a little perplexed with having to do it; albeit reluctantly, as if he knew he needed to. If Chuck Todd’s new role on MTP is to attempt credibility retention he held no choice, he had to bring up the geography.  Todd specifically needed to ask, because Dear Leader avoided mentioning Syria throughout the previous ten minutes:

@09:25 President Obama: “the boots on the ground have to be Syrian”.
Chuck Todd interjects “but WHO”?
President Obama has publicly committed himself to the removal of Syrian head Basher Assad.  His public proclamations to Assad’s removal make getting cooperation from the Syrian National Army a little disingenuous amid the option scale.
Additionally we know the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is little more than a corrupted fractured contingent of ne’er-do-wells, most of which defected to join ISIS.  And then we have Dear Leader’s previous statements saying to the New York Times’ Tom Freidman it is “fantasy” to think “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth” could battle “a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, [and] a battle-hardened Hezbollah.”
So naturally Chuck Todd had to ask the question: Whose boots does Obama plan on supporting?
To wit POTUS puts three groups on the table: The Syrian national army, ISIS, and some weirdly defined “Moderate Opposition” – and then says we should support the moderate opposition who are “pinched between the Syrian Army and ISIS“.

STOP  

{{Insert Scratching Record Sound}}}

Let’s just imagine a REAL REPORTER was sitting in that seat across from POTUS. (more…)

There are moments in edited TV content when a keyed-in viewer can see a cut intended to make a “comfort edit”, smoothing out the narrative. The Chuck Todd interview with President Obama was riddled with them. Even when being interviewed by a fellow ideological traveler.

But first to content:
On ISIS:
@00:24 “this administration has” – President Obama using third person distancing tactic discussing an uncomfortable negative. When the topic is positive, or viewed as favorable currency, the term “my administration” is used.
@01:05 “what I have done over the past several months” – President Obama knowing he was caught flat-footed, having called ISIS “JV”, and having admitted not having a strategy is now trying to give appearance of them having been working on this all along.
@01:45 “the next phase, is to start going on some offense” – Again, framing incompetence as if there was a previous outline/plan in place. This is similar to the re-writing of the Syrian RED LINE strategy, ‘yeah, yeah, we, um, we meant to um, create that Russian intervention WMD thing’. Embarrassingly juvenile for a President. (more…)