My goodness.

American politicians are getting all tangled up over Syria. Who drew a "red line" on chemical weapons use? President Obama said today he had not, "the world" had (He had.). If you're interested you can read all about red lines here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/middleeast/obamas-vow-on-chemical-weapons-puts-him-in-tough-spot.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Other comments the president made today suggested that it would be all Congress' fault if America didn't intervene. So, maybe it was not entirely unrelated that a day after saying that he would support a congressional resolution on US military intervention, Senator John McCain said he would not support this congressional resolution, the one proposed by the Obama administration.

I am interested in this subject, I have followed it reasonably closely, I've thought and written about it from a couple different angles, I think I have a reasonable handle on whatever crosscurrents and complexity there are to be handled. The article cited above made me sick and it made me think immediately of the anecdote below.

Years ago, I went to a going-away party for a federal prosecutor. We chatted briefly, I can picture the setting perfectly, and I asked, "Omar" I shall call him, if he thought he would miss public service. "Yes, I will miss the clarity. Ben, every day I went to work and no matter how many cases I had my only job was to do the right thing as I saw it."