Here's how Obama's handpicked UN rep analyzed the Syria gas problem

Samantha Power is Obama's hand-picked ambassador to the United Nations.  Here's how she made the case for a U.S. strike on Syria, in a speech to the left-wing "Center for American Progress:"

We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to [Syria], on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks.  Or if not, at a minimum we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary base could convince Russia or Iran — itself a victim of Saddam Hussein's monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 — to cast loose a regime that was gassing its people.

It takes a minute for the astonishing naivete--some would say stupidity--of the above statement to sink in.  What in the world would lead a rational adult to believe the mere presence of a U.N. inspection team somewhere in Syria would deter either side from using whatever weapons they felt would give them an advantage, considering that 100,000 Syrians have died in the current civil war.

But even that astonishing piece of unreasoning is eclipsed by the second sentence:  Did the Obama administration really believe Russia--a patron of Syria's Assad family for decades--would side with the U.S. over its long-time client?  If so, on what conceivable basis did they expect such a drastic reversal?

Well if Russia isn't likely to side with us, surely--surely--those nice mullahs who run the Islamic "republic" of Iran would....I mean, it's not like they've been calling the U.S. "the great satan" since, oh, 1979.

Honestly, it's even hard to lampoon "strategic analysis" this dumb.

Power and company are the same people who think it won't really be a problem if Iran develops its own atomic bomb.  Cuz, really, Iran's leaders are "just like us."  So they even if they get The Bomb, they wouldn't actually use it.

The scariest thing about this story is that Power, all her advisors, and Obama's advisors aren't just some random idiots at Democrat Underground.  Rather, now that congress has surrendered the last of their traditional oversight roles, Power and associates are supposedly the top foreign-policy thinkers in the entire Obama administration.

God Almighty.  How did this once-great nation come to this pass?  Oh, that's right:  35 percent idiots, 13 percent guilt-riddled liberals and five percent vote fraud.  That's all it took.

So how did the normally intensely anti-war Washington Post react to the above?

Syria is...the sort of problem that Power made her name writing and thinking about: not just a terrible humanitarian catastrophe, but one with complex international legal and diplomatic aspects...

The Post, as everyone knows, is a big proponent of the U.S. using military force to force brutal dictators who kill their own people or invade neighbors to stop.  Like Saddam Hussein, for example.  The Post was a strong supporter of taking military action against Saddam.  Uh-huh.

Whether you find her case compelling, it’s steeped in years of rigorous study on exactly the issues at hand and avoids a lot of the politically tinged confusion or moralizing in earlier cases from the administration.

Ah.  Her conclusions aren't just wild guesses but are the result of "years" of "rigorous" study.  And not just on random stuff, but on exactly the issues at hand!  Well that clinches it--if she's spent years studying exactly the issues at hand, her conclusions have to be right.

Is this a newspaper or a press release from a PR firm?  Amazing...the Post is now squarely in the camp of advocating military intervention to stop bad behavior even within a single country.  What a change!

In case the reader may still be unsure whether Power has reached the "right" conclusion, the author quickly adds that Power's analysis "avoids a lot of the politically tinged confusion or moralizing in earlier cases from the administration."

Can there be any doubt of the Post's sentiments?  Again, a breathtaking reversal of the traditional position.