The Snowden-Manning Axis: A Political, Foreign Policy Argument

Premise 1—The Snowden Axiom: The NSA (and inter alia its Israeli and British counterparts) is hoovering up all the electronic and telephonic signals in the world—or at least, it is claimed, those most relevant to U.S. interests and the war on terror. There are no more secrets.

There is no place more relevant at the present moment to U.S. interests and the war on terror than Syria—especially given its use of chemical weapons of mass destruction.

It is safe to assume the U.S. (and inter alia its Israeli and British counterparts) is hoovering up all the electronic signals emanating in and from Syria.
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Premise 2—The Manning Axiom: All-powerful President Obama has authorized and is using drones and drone strikes as the primary means to execute his foreign policy objectives around the world.

He has the (near-tyrannical) ability to use them anywhere, any time, and against anybody he chooses—possibly even against U.S. citizens—and has used them in the past against innocent civilians for little or no apparent reason.
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It follows, then, from the Snowden Axiom that: President Obama knows who, up and down the Syrian chain of command, authorized, ordered, and executed the recent chemical weapons strike against Syrian citizens. (The U.N. "investigation" is a sham and merely for show.)
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Therefore: President Obama can (and probably should) use targeted, surgical drone strikes against each and every Syrian in the chain of command who authorized, ordered, and executed the chemical weapons strike instead, say, of initiating a boots-on-the-ground war or the sort of air and missile strikes that would draw us into a Middle East civil war.

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Where's the fallacy in that argument? Is it in the axiomatic assumptions? You tell me.

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Furthermore, if Obama doesn't do this, he's weak and ineffectual as a leader and a commander-in-chief.

Or, he's in the thrall of his military-industrial complex overlords who have too much of a surplus inventory of unused war machines that need to be expended (so they can update their stores and build some more on a cost-plus basis) and too few military personnel in actual combat to keep the top-heavy general staff officers from getting bored.

Or else, he's a cynical war-monger who wants to take this country even further rightward using a boots-on-the-ground war to cement his grasp on power as a Bushian 'war time President'.

Or, all of the above.

[Or, alternatively, the Snowden and Manning axioms are, well, shall we say, over-stated.]

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However, if Obama does authorize the use of targeted drone strikes against the perpetrators up and down the Syrian chain of command, it's a tacit confirmation that:

• he's a tyrant and an outlaw on the world stage;
• that he does use the NSA to hoover up all the sigint in the world; 
• that he can and will authorize and order drone strikes anywhere, any time, and against anyone in the world; and last but not least
• all our worst, most paranoid fantasies are indeed true.

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Extra Credit: Agent Mike: Since, pursuant to the U.S. PATRIOT Act, each of the intelligence agencies is supposed to coordinate its efforts with all the others, and even though this is meant to be a piece of satire, you should actually use this as a suggestion to your friends at CIA—you know, run it up the flag pole and see who salutes (or has an itchy drone trigger finger)—instead of, I don't know, adding yet another ridiculous entry to some useless bureaucratic file somewhere on some idiot blogger who doesn't know what he's talking about.