By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 10 -- President Barack Obama's prime time speech on Syria was short, and only near the end did he even mention the UN Security Council and the UN.
The gambit to have Syria identify chemical weapons, sign a treaty and invite the UN in through the march toward missile strikes into disarray. Obama said he'd asked for delay in Congress -- when things had been looking bleak for him there, especially in the House of Representatives.
Obama's speech was mostly summary, hung on references to YouTube videos and a letter from an unnamed interlocutor, that whoever comes after Assad might violate human rights.
Might eat lungs, you say? This wasn't heard in Obama's speech.
Obama mentioned Russia, then France and the UK. (China never showed up.) Then at Minute 13 Obama spoke of a resolution in the UN Security Council, and of UN involvement. The name of Ban Ki-moon, or even the words "Secretary General," did not come up.
There was no mention at all of the UN report. But nor did Obama repeat the "UN is hocus pocus" line he used after the G-20.
Just after Obama finished, two US networks were showing singing and dancing shows. On ABC they noted that Obama's speech had not been shown live in Syria. (Of course, it was 4 am there.)
From a UN perspective, all of the manipulative effort to get Ban Ki-moon on television -- canceling noon briefings for Ban to take a mere two or five pre-selected questions, refusing as on Tuesday to take any but Syria questions, even amid questions about the UN's Intervention Brigade in the Eastern Congo and a seeming cover-up of attacks on the press in South Sudan. and Liberia (click here for short pitchof the Free UN Coalition for Access @FUNCA_info, on press freedom.)
Ban's UN is all in, but not to Obama. The UN's Race for Relevance continues. Watch this site.
