For the past few days there has been a storm of activity in the US about Syria, chemical weapons, red lines, game changers, no-fly zones, supplying weapons, military intervention, and on, and on, and on.
Almost everywhere else in the world there is no such discussion.
I wonder, why this sudden tempest in the US?
One reason is that every time the Syrian opposition suffers political setbacks or Syrian rebels suffer military setbacks you can be sure that a profusion of charges of chemical weapons use and massacres by the Syrian military will quickly follow.
This has been happening for the past 18 or so months.
The other reason, I think, is that Republicans have understood that there is no downside for them.
If President Obama doesn't intervene they can call him weak, or accuse him of damaging America's standing in the world, or of being wishy-washy, or of multiple other things.
But even more importantly if he does intervene they could hit the jackpot. No one will remember that Republicans pushed for intervention when photographs of American soldiers with American flags standing next to radical Islamic fighters with their very recognizable flags hit the internet and the media.
And what about pictures of US generals and administration officials taken with Syrian opposition figures when they open their interim government offices in northern Syria to administer rebel controlled areas with the Sharia legal code that was prepared with US financial support.
You think photographs like these won't be spread all over the media and the internet?
They will.
Now just imagine how the Republicans will use them.