President Obama and his team are putting on the hard sell today in Washington to try to convince the public and Congress to support his goal of attacking Syria. Obama himself will be on every single television network tonight giving interviews, while his top advisers will be holding extensive briefings with various members of Congress.
Obama then gives a prime-time speech tomorrow night (one presumes it would have been tonight, but the Eagles-Redskins game on Monday Night Football pushed it towards Tuesday - got to have your priorities in order).
As we've noted since the middle of last week, the votes to support the attack simply aren't there in the House of Representatives. But Obama could change that equation if he starts getting the public to support the idea, which is why his prime-time speech tomorrow night is the most important half-hour of his second term in office. Because if he loses the vote in the House, how can he go bomb Syria? What would be the point of even going to Congress? But how hamstrung would be for the next three years if he does lose that vote? This speech tomorrow night in his last chance to convince a skeptical public that it's in our country's collective best interests to punish the Assad govt. in Syria.
Meanwhile there was another hundred plus protesters calling for no war in Syria this past Saturday night in Tampa. CL's Terence Smith reports.
The 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will be observed later this week. It's also the first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, the first such U.S. ambassador to die while doing his job overseas since 1979. And the controversy about how big a scandal it is continues. If you think not, you didn't see the confrontation on Fox News Sunday yesterday between Karl Rove and Juan Williams.
And the issue of black-on-black crime was the topic of a discussion Thursday night in East Tampa.