War

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison

Waging endless wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Syria) isn’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, it’s certainly not making America great again, and it’s undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

In fact, it’s a wonder the economy hasn’t collapsed yet.

This should be the world's scariest chart:

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Given the interconnectedness and tensions rising everywhere, the fuse is lit and it seems the world's population is increasingly realizing we're "going to war."

h/t @StockBoardAsset

Former U.N weapons inspector Scott Ritter warned before the start of the Iraq war that claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction were false.

Sunday, Ritter wrote that current claims that the leader of Syria launched a chemical weapons attack was false:

Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

Update:  In his opening statement, Secretary of Defense Mattis looked to quickly quash doubts over which party was responsible for the recent sarin gas attacks in Syria saying there was "no doubt" that the Assad regime "planned, orchestrated it and executed it." 

With everyone putting down new and/or revised "red lines", be it on Syria or North Korea, it was now China's turn to reveal its "red" or rather "bottom line", and in a harshly worded editorial titled "The United States Must Not Choose a Wrong Direction to Break the DPRK Nuclear Deadlock on Wednesday" Beijing warned it would attack North Korea's facilities producing nuclear bombs, effectively engaging in an act of war, if North Korea crosses China's "bottom line."