Live Thread: Kerry To Make Statement On Syria at 2:00 pm Eastern

[cali]

Last edited Mon Aug 26, 2013, 01:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Secretary of State John Kerry will deliver a statement on the crisis in Syria at 2 p.m. ET, the State Department announced Monday, as the U.S. girds for possible military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Kerry will deliver the statement in the briefing room at the State Department.

His statement comes as the U.S. is under growing pressure to respond forcefully to reports that the Assad regime used chemical weapons last week that opposition groups said killed more than 1,000 people. The White House held meetings over the weekend to decide how to respond but officials said late Sunday that President Barack Obama has yet to make a decision.

Mr. Kerry’s statement will precede the daily briefing at the State Department with reporters. White House press secretary Jay Carney was supposed to brief reporters at the White House at 12:30 p.m. ET, but changed the time of his briefing to 3 p.m. Shortly after, the State Department announced that Mr. Kerry would make a statement on Syria.

<snip>

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/26/kerry-to-deliver-remarks-on-syria/

[YvonneCa]

1. This will be live on CSpan1...

... http://www.c-spanvideo.org/event/223510

Thanks for posting this cali.

[RKP5637]

4. Thanks for link! n/t

[KoKo]

2. Sounds like "Bombs Away" since Jay Carney re-scheduled the

Daily Briefing to Reporters for after Kerry's speech.

I hope I'm wrong.

[cali]

3. Me too. My stomach is in knots.

[KoKo]

5. Reliving another damned nightmare fuckup... It's pretty sad...

living through this over again.

[cali]

6. It's about to begin.

I can't imagine that the President himself wouldn't make a statement if they were announcing military action, but who knows? The have postponed the the daily WH briefing as well as the State briefing.

[cali]

7. Rescheduled for 2:30

[rusty fender]

8. If Kerry is making the statement, then I think

that it will be a final ultimatum. If we were going to attack immediately, the Prez would, more likely, make a statement from the Oval.

[KoKo]

9. The President is on now honoring Afghan Soldiers..so I guess Kerry

will speak afterwards.

[YvonneCa]

10. That would be a good guess. Kerry would never ..

...be seeming to upstage the troops, or President Obama. He's much too respectful and classy for that.

[cali]

11. still delayed: I predict Kerry will really amp up the rhetoric

using this to lay the groundwork for the coming attack.

makes me nervous that they keep delaying this.

[Catherina]

12. Just started and yes Cali, they amped up the rhetoric in a shocking manner n/t

[cali]

13. omg, catherina, hearing him right now, I feel sick

this is all about emotional manipulation to get support for an attack.

His fucking rhetoric is just disgusting.

[Catherina]

19. Me too.

I'm in slow tears right now. More madness.

Edit for a

[KoKo]

20. Words cannot describe....

Neither can they describe the Ceremony to Honor the Afghan hero which took place at the time that Kerry's Speech was scheduled that I watched for almost 40 minutes waiting for Kerry.

[Catherina]

22. Pushback is starting already

Justin Amash ‏@repjustinamash 57s

War Powers Res is short. It's simply lazy journalism to misreport that Pres can take unilateral action for 60 days. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1541 …

https://twitter.com/repjustinamash/status/372074823939153920

I'm making calls to Congress right now. Hell NO.

[cali]

14. I can't say how I'm feeling about Kerry and the admin right now

this is just another tragic rush to war.

[cali]

15. After making those claims he should have taken questions. fucking period.

[PowerToThePeople]

16. Playing to emotions, not facts.

Rah Rah War!!!!!!!

[cali]

17. so familiar and so deeply depressing.

round and round and round we go.

[PowerToThePeople]

18. Will this be the first "Youtube" invasion?

I saw something on Youtube that looks awful. Kill !!!!!

[Ichingcarpenter]

21. Kerry been reading Kissinger just lately

which I found ironic since Kissinger was such a great guy in Kerry's Vietnam days.






Kerry said Speaking to State Department personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil this past Tuesday:





“I’m a student of history, and I love to go back and read a particularly great book like [Henry] Kissinger’s book about diplomacy where you think about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the balance of power and how difficult it was for countries to advance their interests and years and years of wars,”



Kerry said to a gathering of State Department employees and their families.



“And we sometimes say to ourselves, boy, aren’t we lucky,” Kerry continued.


“Well, folks,” he said,

“ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by


this
little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year.



“It makes it much harder to govern,

makes it much harder to organize people,

much harder to find the common interest,”


http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/08/213088.htm

[markpkessinger]

23. Couldn't help but notice . . .

. . . that he spent a lot of time making the case that chemical weapons were, in fact, used -- something I don't think many are disputing -- and very little time making the case for who, exactly, used them, other than saying "we know the Assad regime has custody of these kinds of weapons."