As of this writing, early Thursday morning, some Syrians are scheduled to pay with their lives for America’s “credibility.” The bombarding of an already war-ravaged country is acknowledged as “symbolic,” intended simply to “send a message.” This is an obscenity as great as the one Washington purports to answer. Another Middle Eastern society will come further unstitched, and those doing the unstitching will have nothing on offer to replace it. 
 
 The U.S. long ago squandered what credibility it may once have enjoyed or desired in the Mideast. If credibility were the cause, Washington need do no more than start dismantling the Potemkin village it has made of the principles it tediously mouths.But this thought goes nowhere these days. 
 
 And so the U.S. stalks into another war in the Middle East. Unlike the Iraq and Afghanistan wars—American works of art, both—the conflict in Syria is somebody else’s canvas. But apart from this, the similarities among these three instances of Washington’s wanton hostility toward uncompliant regimes are astonishingly similar. 
 
 Make that tragically similar. History proceeds, we Americans insist on the virtue of ignorance, on learning nothing and knowing nothing. And what we are about to get is what we get, predictably and always. We are a singular people, no question. Maybe even exceptional. 
 
 As of these hours, the Obama administration is on the record as rejecting any deliberations the U.N. may judge just. On Wednesday evening, British Prime Minister David Cameron gave in to Labour Party objections to his support for Washington’s invasion plans. Britain now wants to see a U.N. report on the alleged chemical attacks from weapons instructors, and to give the Security Council process more time. 
 
 But listen closely to President Obama speaking Wednesday on PBS' "Newshour" and it is clear the U.S. could go it alone against the Syrian regime if need be. "We’re prepared to work with anybody – the Russians and others – to try to bring the parties together to resolve the conflict," Obama said. "But we want the Assad regime to understand that by using chemical weapons on a large scale against your own people ... you’re also creating a situation where U.S. national interests are affected, and that needs to stop." 
 
 So not even the fig leaves of international assent matter now. 
 
 Events since the apparent attacks with chemical substances in four residential districts of Damascus last week bear all the marks of a disgraceful bum’s rush. Given that the cruise missiles the Obama administration is about to send into Syria will bear the chalk signatures of every American, like a World War II bomb, we are the chumps of the piece (once again, that is). This is a shared responsibility. It makes us complicit. 
 
 The fabrications and duplicity put before us as Washington prepares to “respond” to the latest savagery in Syria are so strangely formed that it is hard to follow the bouncing ball. The Obama people have changed their story diametrically before our eyes, casting aside all consistency, self-evidently making it up as they go along. And it is the same story recited countless times before. Maybe it is the only story Americans can articulate or grasp—a disturbing thought, but one begging consideration at this point. 
 
 Stories require media, of course, and there they are, on the case in the Syrian crisis and delivering the goods with irresponsible single-source stories dressed up as responsible multiple-source stories. When was it that journalists began thinking of themselves as national security operatives? It is getting unbearable, this errand-boy act in the face of power. If journalists did their jobs properly we would get into fewer messes such as Syria and would be more nationally secure. As it is now, the press is a defective piece in the democratic mechanism. 
 
 Instantly after news of chemical weapons and fatalities arrived last week, Washington and its allies began clamoring for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to allow a team of U.N. inspectors to examine the sites in question. It absolutely had to be. Nothing else would do. We read this. 
 
 Within 48 hours, the Obama people asserted that any such scrutiny was beside the point. When Assad gave assent to the U.N. team’s visit, which was not much delayed given the shelled zone is a battlefield, he was “too late to be credible.” All the evidence would have “degraded,” as we also read. 
 
 Too late? Degraded? The U.N. team is one of experts. They are in Syria to examine sites where chemicals were allegedly used months ago and would not be there if the question of degradation were authentic. This we did not read, with one exception. On Wednesday the New York Times’ science correspondent, William Broad, had the integrity and sense to cite non-government sources—Yikes!—to point out that chemical agents used in weaponry do not dissipate for a woefully long time. Skeptics can ask the Vietnamese. 
 
 The Broad piece got the bottom of page eight. As I.F. Stone once said of the Washington Post, the paper is always a kick because you never know where you will find a front-page story. 
 
 By early this week, if you can take this in, U.S. officials were privately urging the U.N. to abort the mission in Syria. Washington had plainly decided by this time that evidence was not quite the thing. We did not read this, either—not in an American publication. 
 
 We come to the Mack truck Obama’s people want to park unnoticed in the driveway. “Evidence” of chemical weapons use, even as Obama’s people dodged from any, quickly became “undeniable” (Secretary of State Kerry), a matter of “no doubt” (Vice President Biden), and many other forcefully stated things. This language we read in abundance—and with no decent, professional scrutiny on the part of those conveying it. 
 
 And did you notice? Evidence of use became evidence of the Assad regime’s use. This is the trump suit in the game. No mention by any U.S. official that responsibility may lie with the awful-as-Assad insurgents. And of course one could not read of this prospect in U.S. newspapers or hear it from U.S. broadcasters. An indefensible lapse in logic also goes unnoted. I honestly cannot figure how dumb we are supposed to be. 
 
 We are promised incontrovertible evidence of Assad’s guilt in the course of Thursday. Needless to anticipate. In wars of imagery and spectacle, variants of the above-described routine are frequently rehearsed. Think yellowcake, or Colin Powell at the United Nations, or Judith Miller's "metal tubes" or "mobile weapons labs" in Iraq so eagerly reported by the New York Times. 
 
 I aired my suspicions that the insurgents might well be the culprits in this space last week. I stand by these thoughts times two. 
 
 Assad’s opponents do not possess supplies of sarin gas or other chemical agents, it is suggested. 
 
 Rubbish. Not so by a long way. And they have behaved as savagely as anyone in Assad’s army. 
 
 The rebels could not be capable of mounting an attack of the scale apparent in Damascus last week, we are also advised. 
 
 The defensible position is that of the Russians and responsible elements within Britain: They want a proper investigation and propose we all abide by it. 
 
 Carla del Ponte, the noted investigator of war crimes and a member of the U.N. inquiry on Syria, asserted in May that there was sound reason to examine whether the insurgents were responsible for an obscenity in Syria at that time involving sarin gas. The U.N. human rights investigator said that, "According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas," adding that her commission's best understanding of the facts was that "sarin gas has been used ... by opponents, by rebels, not by government authorities." 
 
 She was tarred and feathered, as our media are versed at doing in the best American tradition. 
 
 But Obama appears determined to circumvent the U.N. regardless of what its investigators suggest. On Wednesday Britain advanced a resolution in the Security Council calling for intervention, but this was pro forma. The Security Council is composed as it is so that alternative worldviews are properly represented. Obama honors alternative worldviews as much as George W. Bush treasured them. So no U.N., not with a veto in the offing from Russia, a Security Council member. Better to go lawless again, and that is the word to bear in mind as the fireworks display unfolds in the coming days. 
 
 In the run-up, there is some piling on. We have once again the crummy “coalition of the willing” junk, familiar from the Iraq war: There are the batboy British, the flimsy resistance of Labourites notwithstanding, and the uncertain France of François Hollande, and Angela Merkel’s Germany (complicated motives there), and of course Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, which is (on the record) eager to regionalize the Syria question so that Iran can be bombed. I have previously identified Bibi as the most dangerous man in the Middle East, and he earns the title once again. 
 
 The Arab League says no. The European Union says no. Even NATO equivocates as of this hour. Take it apart. Most of humanity is not on board for this adventure in theater. 
 
 I conclude with what I consider the caker, the preposterous-news- of-the-week prize, even if we cannot read about it in our country but online. 
 
 “The bulk of evidence proving the Assad regime’s deployment of chemical weapons—which would provide legal grounds essential to justify any western military action—has been provided by Israeli military intelligence.” That would be the reliable folk at Mossad. The quotation comes from the Guardian, which simply reported on a report in a German magazine called Focus. 
 
 My goodness. Send in the clowns. They’re already here. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Defence Secretary Philip Hammond: 'Parliament has spoken' about Syria 
 
 The defence secretary has said MPs could be asked to vote again on action in Syria, but only if circumstances changed "very significantly". 
 
 Labour urged Philip Hammond to "spell out" what would change his mind, after the coalition accepted the defeat of its Commons motion last week. 
 
 But he said it was a "bit rich" of the opposition to "demand" answers, having led protests against military action. 
 
 Meanwhile, the US has delayed strikes pending the approval of Congress. 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry now says the US has evidence the chemical nerve agent sarin was used by President Bashar al-Assad's government in a deadly attack in Damascus on 21 August. 
 
 The US put the death toll at 1,429, including 426 children. 
 
 Image caption UN weapons inspectors have now left Syria and are analysing their samples 
 
 In other developments: 
 
 A senior UN official says the Syrian refugee situation is the worst displacement crisis of all time, with seven million people estimated to have fled their homes 
 
 A BBC poll suggests nearly three-quarters of Britons believe MPs were right to reject UK military action in Syria - and two thirds did not care if it damaged US-UK relations 
 
 The Ministry of Defence confirms "no UK Armed Forces personnel, including those seconded to work with the armed forces of ally nations, will participate in... military action" against Syria 
 
 France says its intelligence indicates Syria's government carried out the attack, as pressure grows for a parliamentary vote on military action 
 
 Arab League foreign ministers call for "deterrent and necessary measures" against the Assad regime, but Lebanon and Iraq do not back the call 
 
 US ally Jordan rules out joining any coalition against Damascus 
 
 The UK government rejects newspaper claims chemicals exported from Britain could have been used in the production of chemical agents 
 
 US Senator John McCain says a vote by Congress against President Obama's proposal for military force in Syria would be catastrophic 
 
 President Assad denies his forces were behind the attack and warns military intervention would have "negative repercussions" 
 
 Last week, the government lost a Commons vote on supporting action, in principle, against Assad's government by 13 votes. 
 
 Thirty-nine Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs sided with Labour to bring about the defeat, with several senior ministers since conceding that the question would not be asked again. 
 
 Analysis We now have a people carrier's worth of political heavyweights who didn't like the outcome of last week's Commons vote on Syria musing that perhaps Parliament could be asked to vote again. Lords Howard and Ashdown clambered on board over the weekend, as did Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Now Boris Johnson has joined them. The essence of their case is to test Labour's argument. Ed Miliband didn't rule out military action in principle, so would he change his mind if the evidence changes? But Labour can say this is irrelevant because the prime minister has made it clear the UK won't be involved. Nick Clegg has repeated that the UK will not be involved in military action in response to the use of chemical weapons in Damascus last month. But what would the UK do if there was another chemical weapons attack? 
 
 An ICM poll for the BBC - speaking to 1,000 people by telephone between Friday and Monday - suggested nearly three-quarters of people believed MPs had taken the right decision, and thought it would not harm US-UK relations. 
 
 But the US delay and its claims of fresh evidence against the Syrian regime has prompted suggestions from senior politicians that the House of Commons could reconsider its position. 
 
 Former Lib Dem and Conservative leaders Lord Ashdown and Lord Howard, and former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, have said the US's own delay could allow the House of Commons to "think again". 
 
 Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson also insisted a new proposal "inviting British participation" could still be put before Parliament, 
 
 In the Commons, Labour's shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy asked Mr Hammond to "spell out in what, if any, circumstances" the government would hold a second parliamentary debate on UK military intervention in Syria. 
 
 Mr Hammond replied: "It's a bit rich for you, who last week trooped into the lobbies behind your leader, giving rise to the very situation we now find ourselves in, to demand I tell you precisely in which circumstances we might revisit this issue. 
 
 "I've said already we believe Parliament has spoken clearly on this issue and is unlikely to want to revisit it unless the circumstances change very significantly." 
 
 The BBC's James Landale said Labour sources had cited examples of what would need to change - such as al-Qaeda getting possession of huge stocks of chemical weapons or a direct threat to UK national security emerging - for Parliament to reconsider the matter. 
 
 'Helping al-Qaeda' 
 
 But, questioned at a press conference in London, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "We're not going to go back to Parliament with the same question on the same issue, in response to the same atrocity the week before last, because that decision was made by Parliament." 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says there is no point going back to Parliament over the same question 
 
 The prime minister's official spokesman also told reporters the government had "absolutely no plans to go back to Parliament". 
 
 He said the UK would continue to make the case for a robust response to President Assad at the G20 later this week. 
 
 Meanwhile, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told the BBC that any military action against Syria would amount to "support for al-Qaeda and its affiliates", claiming armed groups backed by the US had used chemical weapons - not Syrian troops. 
 
 President Obama's surprise decision to ask Congress for approval means that a strike which was thought to be imminent will now not go ahead before 9 September - when Congress reconvenes - at the earliest. 
 
 The opposition Syrian National Coalition called Mr Obama's decision a "failure of leadership", saying it could "embolden" President Assad's forces. 
 
 More than 100,000 people are estimated to have died since civil conflict erupted in Syria in March 2011. 
 
 The violence began when Syrian security forces clamped down on anti-government protests. ||||| First, the news: President Obama announced tonight that he has "asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path." 
 
 So for now, the vote is off. The deal with Russia is on. 
 
 
 
 Mohammad Hannon/AP - Syrian protesters carry placards showing dead children to condemn the alleged poison gas attack on the suburbs of Damascus, during a protest in front of the Syrian Embassy, in Amman, Jordan, on Friday. 
 
 The problem is that if the diplomatic path is going to work, Russia and Syria need to believe Obama's threat to use force is credible. That means Obama needs to win enough public and congressional support that his threats remain credible. The result was an odd speech: One that had to make the case for war the administration was seeking on Sunday even as it pivoted toward the diplomatic solution the administration lucked into on Monday. 
 
 The White House had a surprisingly encouraging story to tell tonight: Already, the threat of military force has gotten Russia and Syria to propose concessions that were unthinkable mere weeks ago. The two have agreed, at least in principle, that if the United States forswears force against Syria, then Syria will sign the treaty against chemical weapons and give up its stockpiles of deadly gas. It would be a huge victory in the century-long fight to eradicate chemical weapons. 
 
 That deal will fall apart if Syria and Russia conclude that the White House's threats are empty. Obama needs the country's backing to strike Syria so he can strike a diplomatic bargain to get rid of Assad's chemical arsenal, thus ending America's interest in striking Syria. 
 
 But Obama can't get that support by going on prime time and asking Americans to help him bluff Russia. So in trying to win the country's backing, Obama opened with a very bad argument -- one that fundamentally misleads Americans about the nature of the intervention the president is proposing. 
 
 The situation profoundly changed, though, on August 21st, when Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The images from this massacre are sickening, men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk. On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off limits, a crime against humanity and a violation of the laws of war. 
 
 He made a similarly emotional argument at the end: 
 
 And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with the failure to act when a cause is so plainly just. To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough. Indeed, I’d ask every member of Congress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack, and then ask, what kind of world will we live in if the United States of America sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way? 
 
 The middle of the speech included more careful points about chemical weapons. But the big opening and closing were dedicated to a vivid, urgent and moral case against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's atrocities. But that just serves to highlight what Obama is not proposing: Ending the bloodshed in Syria. 
 
 Most Americans aren't paying close attention to the civil war in Syria. They don't know that more than 100,000 Syrians have died, and that chemical weapons account for less than 1 percent of those casualties. It's borderline perverse to use descriptions of pain, suffering and death to justify an intervention that would leave the cause of more than 99 percent of these deaths untouched. As Time's Michael Crowley tweeted, "The images of children crippled by conventional bombs were sickening, too." 
 
 To put it simply, if it is "the images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor" that motivate our intervention in Syria, why should we care whether the children were attacked with gas or steel? 
 
 If Obama's diplomatic path works, Assad will begin destroying his chemical weapons even as he continues slaughtering the opposition with conventional weapons. The Obama administration hopes, of course, that that won't happen -- that the deal to disarm him will open negotiating space for a deal to end the conflict. But there's no guarantee of that. France's draft U.N. Security Council resolution -- which the United States supports -- is silent on Assad's conventional weapons, and his use of them. That's a silence no reasonable viewer would infer from Obama's speech. 
 
 At this point, the White House has a surprisingly good plan to avoid war while achieving the limited goal of disarming Assad's chemical arsenal. But it relies on them making a very bad argument for a much larger war with much broader, more humanitarian, objectives. ||||| Whom should President Obama ask before he bombs Syria? One of the answers being bandied about is nobody but his own conscience, and some generals who will tell him how to do it. An Op-Ed in today’s Times tells him not to mind various laws and treaties, or rather the lack of applicable ones. Maybe the awful pictures from Ghouta are telling him the same thing; not getting anyone outside White House meeting rooms, or at the other end of a secure phone line, to put his or her name down might be natural, even instinctive, but it is not what the moment demands. There have been calls for the President to reconvene Congress and put this one before them, and such calls are right. It might even help the Administration figure out what, exactly, it hopes to accomplish by shooting missiles in the general direction of Damascus. 
 
 Having people, representatives, raise their hands before you do something is not an empty ritual, even when they don’t vote the way you want them to. Britain’s David Cameron has called in Parliament, which will meet Thursday, with plans to vote more than once; on Wednesday, his government submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council of the United Nations that would authorize “all necessary measures to protect civilians” in Syria. It would be a shock if it doesn’t fail, because Russia and China would veto it at this juncture—and, as John Cassidy writes, the weapons inspectors trying to figure out just what happened need time. But our domestic political process needs time, too, and deserves it. 
 
 As of Wednesday afternoon, a hundred and fourteen members of Congress had signed a letter put together by Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican with a lot of service members in his district, asking Obama to reconvene them and get authorization for any attack. Most of those who signed on were Republicans, but not all of them. Obama could do so if he wanted to. John Boehner could also bring back the House, and Harry Reid the Senate; it would be a mistake not to. 
 
 What is the disadvantage of going to Congress? That they are loud and annoying and someone will try to introduce a resolution tying action in Syria to Obamacare? If the Administration can’t stand up to Ted Cruz, it can hardly hope to frighten Bashar al-Assad. And if going to Congress now feels time-consuming, how does it compare to the hours, days, weeks, and sanity expended on the Benghazi hearings? Those might have happened anyway, but they got a fair share of their formless force from the Administration’s initial decision to not really bother with Congress and the War Powers Act when it came to Libya. If you haven’t been asked in the first place, there is no cost to turning a tragedy into a piece of political theatre. 
 
 What, too, does Obama think that future Presidents, even those more reckless than he is, and Congresses, even those that are more unhinged than this one (it is possible), will do if he repeats his Libyan calculation with a Syrian one? Obama is hardly the first President to treat the War Powers Act as something empty and broken; but unless he thinks it should just be crushed, that’s all the more reason not to toss it aside. He’d said that the War Powers Act didn’t apply in Libya because we weren’t engaged in “hostilities”: as the Rigell letter asks, “If the use of 221 Tomahawk cruse missiles, 704 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and 42 Predator Hellfire missiles expended in Libya does not constitute ‘hostilities,’ what does?” Under the War Powers Resolution, the President is supposed to inform Congress within forty-eight hours of starting military action, and get their permission to keep it up after sixty days. That is not onerous in a situation in which no one thinks Syria is about to invade us. 
 
 And on this one, the Administration needs Congress—it needs deliberation. George Packer has laid out what that might look like on a personal level; on a political one, the Administration needs to be interrogated, sharply, about just what it thinks is going to happen after the two or maybe three days of missile strikes that leaks tell us to expect. It might even be asked about non-military options (perhaps something that could help people trapped in refugee camps like Za’atari). Maybe then it would figure it out, at least a little. There is a cloud of haze there now: we don’t want regime change; we just want Assad and the world to remember that chemical weapons shock us deeply. We can’t bomb the chemical-weapon storage sites, though, both because that might itself send out a cloud of poison and because the rebels, whom we don’t trust, might then be able to grab a few canisters. We don’t want to think about what they might do if they did; we don’t want to think about a lot of things in Syria, including the awful last moments in the lives of the children whose bodies we’ve seen stacked up. We would like to have been able to hold them and tell them that anyone who hurts them will have to answer to us. But just bombing a place doesn’t disperse ghosts; more often, it brings chaos and new ones. Is that the only plan? Ask Congress. 
 
 Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty. 
 
 Read more of our coverage of the war in Syria.
– As the US considers what to do about Syria, there's no shortage of advice on the pros and cons: Pro-strike: Nicholas Kristof is generally wary of the "military toolbox," but it's important here to "reinforce the international norm against weapons of mass destruction," he writes in the New York Times. "For all the risks of hypocrisy and ineffectiveness, it’s better to stand up inconsistently to some atrocities than to acquiesce consistently in them all." Ditto: "Deepening American involvement in yet another Middle East conflict goes against President Obama’s instincts—and ours," write the editors at the Miami Herald. "Unemployment should be his principal focus. But events have a way of intruding on presidential agendas. In this instance, it’s unavoidable. Syria’s brazen disregard for humanitarian norms cannot go unanswered." Bad idea: Just what the world needs, yet another western military intervention in an Arab or Muslim country, writes Seumas Milne at the Guardian. Too many questions persist about the alleged chemical weapons attack, he writes, adding that military strikes would only escalate the war. "The risk is that they will invite retaliation by Syria or its allies—including against Israel—draw the US in deeper and spread the conflict." Better for the West to use its leverage with the rebels to try to force cease-fire talks. Slow down: This is remarkably similar to the run-ups to both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, writes Patrick L Smith at Salon. "Make that tragically similar. History proceeds, we Americans insist on the virtue of ignorance, on learning nothing and knowing nothing. And what we are about to get is what we get, predictably and always." Give the UN investigators the time they need, he urges. Ask Congress: Whatever the final decision, President Obama must consult with Congress about it, writes Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. "Having people, representatives, raise their hands before you do something is not an empty ritual, even when they don’t vote the way you want them to," she writes. The White House can't just ignore the War Powers Act whenever it's convenient. "The Administration needs to be interrogated, sharply, about just what it thinks is going to happen after the two or maybe three days of missile strikes that leaks tell us to expect."