Romney…just a few mortar bombs away from the White House
Newly nice-guyed Mitt Romney says that, if elected, he will call for an escalation of the conflict in Syria by arming rebels with the heavy weapons needed to confront president Bashar al-Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets. That will probably gain him another poll point, leaving him one behind the Black Dude. To draw level, not doubt he’ll back Japan as a faithful ally, and vow to nuke China. Then we really are going to see an exciting finish to the Election.
Meanwhile, perhaps the most blatantly staged ‘border skirmish’ since 1939 in Poland was escalated yesterday when another mortar bomb signed by Bashar Assad landed near an empty Turkish factory, devastating an entire tree in its garden. Erdogan the Mad having vowed last Friday to retaliate, we can now expect more shelling of some poor bugger’s bullet-pockmarked hovel inside Syria. But this too is all good for career politics, Hillary Clinton having her eyes firmly set on a 2016 ticket under the slogan ‘Peace in our Time’.
However, this is what a Turkish source emailed to The Slog overnight:
‘The government here has done a thorough forensic check on the mortar fragments involved in last week’s attack. The scientists have concluded that they are typical of the weapon type favoured by the Syrian rebels, not the Syrian government’.
I don’t have substantiation of that. I can only repeat what I blogged last week: the last thing Assad needs right now is to open up another war front. This entire ‘incident’ smacks of being a put-up job, made all the more amusing by William Hague doing his Eddie Waring impressions in the background. He really must be the worst foreign secretary since Anna van Rentle worked in the Foreign Office typing pool during 1943.
Either way, if Romney is still behind come later this month, I’ve taken to wondering what his campaign managers have up their sleeves. And the answer of course has to be arms. Not the ones with elbows and wrists: the other sort that include bazookas and so forth. Tim Geithner has a stock of unused bazookas; he could be helpful here.
What Mitt needs to do now is decide the exact promise he’ll make about who to arm. My money’s on the National Guard once his tax affairs are leaked. I can hardly wait.
The Slog 