War Drums along the Potomac

++Saudi King Abdullah says the terrorists will hit Europe this month and America next month. As Steve Benen notes that the Saudis are one of the reasons we are faced with ISIS today. Sultan Bandar, removed from his position as counter-terrorism chief in Saudi Arabia,was responsible for shipping arms to ISIS in the Saudi attempt to overthrow Assad.

++Prime Minister Cameron of the UK has announced the UK is canceling the passports of those who went to Syria to join the jihad. The UK also announced that the threat level in the country was "High".

++Homeland Security has announced they have not seen any evidence of any immediate threat to the United States by ISIS.

++Conservatives criticize the FBI's recent Terrorism report because it does not list Islamic terrorism as a major current threat to the United States.

++John Kerry has called for a global coalition against ISIS. 

++While he may not have a strategy,President Obama has persuaded Australia to ship arms to Iraq. Germany, Australia and France assisted yesterday's humanitarian relief mission to airdrop supplies to the Turkmen population in Iraq surrounded by ISIS.

++Bill Richardson popped up on the Sunday News Shows to support President Obama taking his time to create a deliberate strategy to deal with ISIS. John McCain and his sidekick Lindsey Graham wrote in the New York Times that President Obama should not dawdle any longer in dealing with this threat.

++The New York Daily News printed an editorial entitled "The Pundits and the Presidency", which went after the punditry for chastising the President constantly over foreign policy while making impossible recommendations that could never see the light of day,especially with this Congress. It suggests that the actual threats in the world have gotten less and the actual direct national interests--either in Gaza,Syria or the Ukraine--are not of sufficient importance to get hysterical about. They also pointed out that their our limitations of America's power and that managing the world or our own foreign policy is a more deliberate exercise than pundits admit.

++The overseas media and the New York Times today focused on ISIS' use of the social media to horrify the West and recruit more jihadists who view themselves as marginalized in Western societies.

++The State Department has opened a social media offensive against ISIS using twitter and social media to counter their image.

++When you dig down into the issue of who and what is to counter ISIS, you get some interesting questions to ask. Which Kurds are you arming? The PKK has been one of the most successful forces in both Syria and Iraq fighting ISIS. Yet,they are on our terrorist list. If you don't want boots on the ground--at least no more than the 1,000 in Iraq and the special forces in Syria, do you ally yourself with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which is on the ground both in Iraq and Syria? But if you do, then do you also support Assad fighting ISIS since he has killed over 150,000 of his countrymen and caused the exodus of 3 million Syrians to neighboring countries of Turkey,Lebanon and Jordan? If you are going to bomb, why don't the Saudis and Jordanians bomb with you? 

++Those are some of the questions that President Obama has to answer to develop a strategy against ISIS. There is a reason President Obama is taking his time. Then if you degrade ISIS to an ineffectual force,what political entity takes its place in Syria? The answer may take years to develop and determine.

++Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has declared the future of Russia lies in the Arctic. Even so, he would like to make Eastern Ukraine and state within Russia. He ominously refer to it as New Russia. This goes on while he invaded Ukraine in the past two days after the Ukrainian military had surrounded the pro-separatists in Donetsk. 

++Carnival Cruz said that President Obama is a"pussycat" compared to that "bear" Putin. Fox News again this week declared they would like to see Putin run the United States because he gets things done.

++President Obama is off to Europe to discuss further sanctions on Russia and to visit the Baltic states. NATO has announced it was forming a rapid-deploymemt force for Ukrainian types of situations. Europe now is debating whether to answer the Ukraine's request for military assistance. Already congress critters are becoming their chorus in the United States.

++Harold Koh, the former Counsel for the State Department, has argued that President Obama needs a Security Council Resolution if he is to bomb ISIS positions in Syria. Rachel Maddow has argued that he needs at least an authorization under the War Powers Act to continue his bombing in Iraq. President Obama has argued that his bombings to save the Turkmens and others under humanitarian grounds and to preserve "national interests" like protecting American personnel in Erbil and Baghdad are covered under his rights as Commander-in-Chief. Watch this space as this legal debate continues, which it will through the fall.

++Coming up this fall, President Obama will personally chair a United Nations Security Council Meeting.