ISIS DA

Top Level

1NC ISIS DA
Time is of the essence Congress shifted the agenda and only
has a week to act on ISISObama is key
Espo and Klapper 9/11 (David Espo and Bradley Klapper, writers for the Associatged Press,
President's request to combat militants draws bipartisan support
http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/sep/11/presidents-request-combat-militants-draws-support/) swap

Republicans and Democrats

coalesced Thursday behind President Barack Obama's call to train and arm Syrian
rebels fighting Islamic State militants and pointed toward votes in the heat of a midterm election campaign. " We
ought to give the president what he's asking for ," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio,
said, although he swiftly added that many Republicans believe the Democratic commander in chief's strategy is
WASHINGTON Bending for once to the will of the White House,

too tepid to crush militants who have overrun parts of Iraq and Syria and beheaded two American journalists. On

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he

expected legislation ratifying Obama's request to clear Congress by the end of next week when
the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,

lawmakers hope to wrap up their work and go home to campaign for re-election. Congress' two other top officials,
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, also said Obama would likely
get the support he seeks. Congress is in the midst of a two-week session that had been expected
to focus on domestic issues, principally legislation to extend routine government funding beyond the end of the

That agenda changed abruptly Wednesday night, when

Obama delivered a prime-time speech from the White House seeking
"additional authorities and resources to train and equip" rebels . The forces are
Sept. 30 budget year.

simultaneously trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and defeat militants seeking to create an Islamist
caliphate in the heart of the Middle East. Obama says he already has the authority to order airstrikes against

The White House and

many lawmakers say deployment of U.S. troops to train and equip Syrian rebels
activity planned to take place in Saudi Arabia would require additional congressional
approval. On the morning after Obama's speech, the administration deployed a battalion of officials to brief
militants in Syria, although so far, those attacks have come only in neighboring Iraq.

lawmakers, including Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
and Secretary of State John Kerry are expected to testify next week at public hearings in advance of any votes in
Congress. There was a strong political subtext to the developments, eight weeks before voters pick a new House
and settle a struggle for Senate control. Asked whether the topic would be part of the campaign now unfolding, Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who is on the November ballot, said, "Everything is going to be an issue." " We

do not
want to go home without voting on some measure that goes toward destroying and
defeating ISIS wherever it exists," said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, using an alternate acronym for the
militants. Reid accused Republicans of taking cheap political shots at the president, and said, "This is a time for the
rhetoric of campaign commercials to go away." At the same time, candidates seeking re-election will be required to
vote on the president's request, and challengers will be on the spot to state their positions. Broader debate

Republicans served notice they will seek a broader debate, although not before
Congress leaves Washington next week. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican
leader and a frequent critic of Obama, said Congress will work quickly on the White House's immediate request.
Beyond that, he said Congress must consider "what this multiyear campaign will mean for the overall defense
program" from U.S. nuclear forces on land, sea and air, to a need to "retain dominance" in the Pacific. Boehner,
the leader of the Republican-controlled House, said it could take years to train and equip rebel forces, yet "ISIL's
momentum and territorial gains must be halted and reversed immediately." He added, "An F-16 (warplane) is not a
strategy, and airstrikes alone will not accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. And the president's made clear
that he doesn't want U.S. boots on the ground. Well, somebody's boots have to be on the ground." As a president
who came to office promising to end wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has been adamant that he is not now
leading the nation into a new ground conflict. Even so, one Democratic supporter of the president, Sen. Bill Nelson
of Florida, said Wednesday night, "The U.S. will probably put boots on the ground, but it will be more commando

There were scattered

objections to Obama's request from within both political parties.
raids and forward air observers with others to do the actual strikes on the ground."

<Link>
October 7th will determine the link congresss agenda is
TIGHT any new legislation will force a war powers battle that
collapses support for strikes.
Logiurato 9/3/14 (Brett, Political Analysit Congress Is Frustrated With Obama, And They're Beating
The Drums For A War With ISIS Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/congress-to-obama-go-to-warwith-isis-2014-9#ixzz3CSCtixAh)

Obama first notified Congress of military action in Iraq on Aug. 8 under the
1973 War Powers Resolution, which gives the president a 60-day window to
carry out military operations before coming to Congress for approval. The administration hasn't specified whether it

that 60-day window, which would expire on

Oct. 7. White House Press secretary Josh Earnest has said vaguely, when asked various times, that the president
has and will continue to consult with Congress on U.S. military action. Two complicating factors for
Congress are time and timing. Congress will return next Monday from its
recess, but it has a full plate of legislation to tackle already, including passing a
continuing resolution to keep the government funded past Sept. 30. Vulnerable members of
Congress representing war-weary districts of America are also wary of a
vote authorizing military action in an election year. Two congressional aides said
they worry about the possibility of there being "little appetite" for a vote. If
would seek congressional authorization beyond

he pushes for it, congressional aides say, Obama will likely get his authorization though many members of
Congress want that long-awaited strategy to be laid out. Obama will need to come to Congress with defined goals
and objectives.

US military aid is the vital internal link to stopping ISIS solves

MIDDLE EAST escalation and a host of other regional crossborder conflict. Every Delay increases the magnitude of our
impact.
Al-Bahra 8/13/14 (Hadi, president of the Syrian Opposition Coalition. WSJ, Want to Defeat ISIS? Help
the Syrian Opposition, http://online.wsj.com/articles/want-to-defeat-isis-help-the-syrian-opposition-1407971766)
It is said that common foes build strong partnerships. Long before the terrorist army of the Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham marched into the Iraqi city of Mosul, threatened to exterminate the Yazidis and Christians

the Free Syrian Army were

battling ISIS and pushing back this common threat to our people. Now
more than ever, there is a national-security impetus for the United States to
support and arm the Syrian opposition to halt and defeat the ISIS
campaign. The current U.S. airstrikes in Iraq will slow down these Islamic
extremists, but airstrikes are also needed in Syria to hit at the heart of the
ISIS. Defeating them requires the inclusion in a broader U.S.-backed effort of the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian
tribes who already have extensive experience fighting ISIS. The conflict has crossed borders and
now threatens to destabilize the wider Middle East. ISIS could not have reached Iraq
in Iraq, and attacked the country's Kurds, the Syrian Opposition and

and crossed into Jordan and Lebanon had the world heeded our warnings earlier this yearand formed a regional
strategy to combat this threat by supporting those of us who have been fighting these terrorists for months with
little to no outside support. We agree with America's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey,

to effectively handle the ISIS terrorist threat, the U.S. needs

a partnership with those who can "reject it from inside out." The U.S. has that
partner with the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Opposition. To achieve this shared goal, we need quality
military aid, and fast. We face an existential battle in Syria against the Bashar Assad regime that is bent
who said recently that

on the eradication of all who oppose it. The slaughtermore than 160,000 Syrians have been killedis being

conducted on an industrial scale. Recent evidence presented by defectors has revealed how meticulously the killing
has been planned by Assad and his Iranian backers. Yet we have enemies in common with the U.S. and other
potential allies. Before al Qaeda spawned ISIS, Assad's security services provided a haven for al Qaeda on Syrian
territorylong before our revolution against the Assad regime began in 2011. We have fought ISIS and are fighting

the forces of Assad and Iranian-backed

Hezbollah have been making dangerous advances on the opposition-held ancient city of
Aleppo in northwestern Syria. ISIS is trying to aid the advances by pushing deeper
into areas in the north that were liberated during our revolution against
the regime. This ISIS advance so close to the Turkish border presents a
direct threat to us and to U.S. interests. Members of a Free Syrian Army
group fighting in Aleppo, Syria. Getty Images The Free Syrian Army and tribal leaders have proven
other al Qaeda affiliates in Syria. In the past few days,

to be the most effective force in fighting against ISIS and al Qaeda affiliates. On May 16, Free Syrian Army units in
Aleppo province announced the launch of an anti-al Qaeda offensive titled Operation Earthquake of the North. On
May 19, five powerful rebel coalitions signed a "Revolutionary Covenant" denouncing "fundamentalism and
extremism." On June 12, the Free Syrian Army's Southern Front Command released a statement reiterating the
rebels' commitment to democratic principles. We have put forth a blueprint for stabilizing and freeing Syria from the
threats that endanger both the Syrian people, regional allies and the West. We have proposed a scalable Syrian
Rapid Deployment Force, which would form the nucleus of a larger stabilization force of more than 10,000 vetted
and trained fighterscritical to defeating ISIS and Assad's killing machine. We are also in the process of establishing
offices and services in the liberated areas of Syria to support a political framework that will oversee and coordinate
with a military chain of command. We welcome President Obama's recent initiative to support us as the genuine

This
military support will be helpful in the battle against ISIS, and it will save
lives and prevent further spread of the conflict regionally. But this support
will not be enough if it does not arrive quickly and match the pace of the ISIS advance.
Opposition forces will also need to be enabled with an air-defense
capability. We need man-portable air-defense systems (Manpads) to defend
homes and towns and villages from the incessant air bombardment and
regime military assaults. These weapon systems will not fall into extremist hands because our forces
and vetted Syrian opposition with a proposed package of $500 million for military training and equipment.

are actively fighting those very extremists. We also know this because the Free Syrian Army has already benefited
from lethal support from the U.S., demonstrating on the battlefield that it can effectively and responsibly use U.S.-

The
Free Syrian Army is the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS terrorism.
If properly enabled, our opposition forces have the experience and personnel to
turn the tide on the ground. Together with the U.S., we can end the
suffering in Syria. In partnership, we can deal a mortal blow to the terrorist
threat facing both our peoples. But time is of the essence, as ISIS and Assad will
made advanced-weapon systems such as the T.O.W. antitank guided missile. Manpads must be the next step.

exploit any delay to destroy those who stand against them. The U.S.
State Department recently referred to ISIS as "worse than al Qaeda."
Given the dire threat, what could be worse than complacency?

Middle East goes nuclear

James A. Russell, Senior Lecturer, National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate
School, 9 (Spring) Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and
Nuclear War in the Middle East IFRI, Proliferation Papers, #26,
http://www.ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf
Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests
in the bargaining framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of
non-state actors that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the
antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the structure of the deterrent
relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by

Israel and the United States that its window of opportunity for military action is
closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Irans response to preemptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United
States; (6) the lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation

among framework participants. These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all
suggest that escalation by any the parties could happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the
pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these factors , it is disturbingly easy to imagine

scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional
antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It
would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep
nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable strategic
framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the
probability of war a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of participants.
Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and
decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international community must take this
possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such an outcome, which would be

an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the
entire world.

UQ

2NC UQ Wall St. Francis

Fragile bipartisan cooperation will insure passage now
Gore 9/11 (Celina Gore, writer for the Talk Radio News Service Senate Democrats Call For Bipartisan Unity
On ISIS Plan http://www.talkradionews.com/congress/2014/09/11/sen-democrats-call-bipartisan-unity-isisplan.html#.VBOtlPldWSo) swap

Top Senate Democrats called for bipartisan cooperation Thursday on President

Barack Obamas plan to defeat ISIS. Now its up to Congress to rally behind
President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said during a press conference, noting that
he was confident in lawmakers ability to overcome party divisions, cooperate with
the President and immediately act on the proposal. Pointing to Title X of the Armed Services code,
which requires congressional approval to train and equip foreign fighters, the leaders urged their
colleagues form both sides of the aisle to support training efforts that will strengthen
partnerships in the region and prevent the deployment of American troops to fight. When we commit
American servicemen and women in harms way, its time to put partisanship aside and stand
together as a Congress and a nation to be on their side, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. When asked
(TRNS)-

about funding the strategy against ISIS, they stated it was too soon to be speculating about the cost, but estimated
that the fighter training could be $500 million alone. If Democrats and Republicans cant come together to keep us
safe from terrorism, I dont know what will bring us together, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) told reporters.

The

House is expected to vote in favor of the proposal next week . Democrats in the upper
chamber said they will be involved in briefings in the next few days to understand the challenges and ask questions
regarding the Presidents strategy.

The GOP is shifting to Obamas side bipartisanship is key

Starks 9/11 (Tim Starks, writer for Roll Call, Rhetoric Aside, Signs of Bipartisanship After Obama ISIS
Speech http://blogs.rollcall.com/five-by-five/obama-isis-speechrhetoric-aside-signs-of-bipartisanship-over-isis/?
dcz=) swap
If you were just judging by the tone of the GOP response to Barack Obamas speech
Wednesday night about the terrorist group that calls itself the Islamic State, you might get the impression that

Republicans were on very opposite pages with the Democratic president. Look a little
closer and youll see some similarities. Part of the reason for the signs of
agreement over fighting the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, is that Obama is getting more
aggressive, which is what many Republicans wanted . Another reason is that they got a strategy
against ISIS from Obamas speech, which theyve been demanding, even if it fell short of their hopes. And Obama
has been trying to win over the Hill in his anti-ISIS activities, something theyve complained he doesnt do enough
of generally. So many Republicans are expressing some measure of agreement, couched in criticism. CQ Now
reports Thursday, for instance, for CQ.com subscribers: Sen. Rob Portman [R-Ohio @senrobportman] said he
supports the strategy Obama laid out to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria, but said there had been a vacuum
of leadership on the issue: The president may wish it away, but this threat continues, Portman said. Republican
Sens. John McCain of Arizona (@SenJohnMcCain) and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (@GrahamBlog) have been
some of Obamas chief critics over ISIS. While we are eager to receive additional information on all of the

these actions deserve bipartisan support and can degrade

ISIS over time. However, the Presidents plan will likely be insufficient to destroy ISIS, which is the worlds
largest, richest terrorist army. [emphasis theirs] While some Republicans are still interested in an
explicit vote to authorize military action, some key GOP leaders House Speaker John A. Boehner,
Presidents proposals, we believe

R-Ohio (@SpeakerBoehner) among them arent challenging his claim of authority to go it alone. And while
Obamas late request for inclusion in a stopgap funding bill of authorization to ramp up arming Syrian rebels might
have given House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky. (@HouseAppropsGOP), heartburn, a vote on the bill

Some are already on record as

supporting the arming of Syrian rebels, and Bob Corker, R-Tenn. (@SenBobCorker), said he would still
was postponed while he and other lawmakers gave it consideration.

support doing so. This doesnt mean they agree with everything about what Obama is doing, of course. Many of

them want him to be doing even more, and not just McCain and Graham. Its just that

the stories about

the GOP hammering Obama over ISIS have evolved.

Lawmakers are crossing the aisle sustained bipartisan cooperation is key

Lawder and Zengerle 9/11 (David Lawder and Patricia Zengerle, writers for Haaretz,
Republicans mull ISIS plan as Obama invites Congressional support http://www.haaretz.com/1.615246) swap

lawmakers say they are on the verge of taking a "war vote" as they
consider whether to back President Barack Obama's campaign to destroy Islamic State, and
REUTERS - U.S.

despite broad support for action many fear being drawn into a quagmire. The White House wants Congress to
approve $500 million to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels to battle Islamic State militants, a show of confidence
for administration officials as they try to form an international coalition. The beheadings of two U.S. captives by

both Democratic and

Republican congressional leaders were supportive of Obama's plan on Wednesday.
Islamic State have steeled lawmakers to the need for more military action, and

But some Republicans in particular say they want more information from the administration about its wider strategy
to combat global terrorism, and many would prefer a broad vote rather than one focused on funding. "This could be
taken by some as a war vote," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, adding that he has
reservations about providing weapons that could fall into enemy hands. "There are so many unknowns that we are
dealing with here, it's too early to make any decisions," the Kentucky Republican told reporters shortly before
Obama told Americans in a speech on Wednesday night that he had authorized an escalation of his campaign

Rand Paul, also from Kentucky and normally a leader of his

party's isolationist wing, said he would support military action against Islamic State, but wants Obama
to "follow the Constitution" and seek congressional authorization. Just a year ago, U.S.
against Islamic State. Republican Senator

lawmakers recoiled at the thought of military strikes against Syria's government for using chemical weapons. They
handed Obama an embarrassing foreign policy defeat as anti-war Democrats joined isolationist Republicans in a
rare show of bi-partisanship that killed his request for strikes. Democrats are crossing the aisle again ,
this time as they voice strong support for attacking Islamic State, though the overwhelming majority of lawmakers
from both parties oppose the idea of sending in any U.S. ground troops. " I

often disagree with the

president's foreign policy, but you've got to come together as a nation to stand up
to ISIS," said Representative Luke Messer, an Indiana Republican, using another name for Islamic State. While
criticizing Obama's previous handling of the threat from Syria, Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma
Republican, predicted Obama would ultimately get bipartisan support . "You back presidents
up in a situation like this," Cole said. Obama has requested that funds for training rebels be included in a stop-gap
funding bill that would avert a U.S. government shutdown on Oct. 1, the start of a new fiscal year. The White House
has said Obama he does not believe he needs Congress' formal authorization to attack Islamic State.

Its at the top of the docket, but itll take time

Benen 9/11 (Steve Benen, writer for MSNBC, Congress weighs next move on
ISIS, authorization http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/congress-weighsnext-move-isis-authorization) swap
It was just two weeks ago when Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the senior Democrat on the
Armed Services Committee, argued that it would be wise for Congress to come
together and draft a grant of some authority for President Obama to use force
against ISIS targets. He just didnt think its possible not in a million years. There is simply no way on earth
that members of Congress are going to come together and agree on what the language for an authorization for the
use of force in Syria is its just not going to happen, Smith told the New York Times. At the time, that seemed like
a safe bet, and I shared Smiths assumptions. But just

over the last couple of days, the prevailing

winds seem to have shifted. While the week started with congressional leaders taking a pass on the
issue, a new consensus started to come together: Congress cant just do nothing. Jake Sherman has the
latest from the Hill: [I]nternally, senior aides to Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority
Whip Steve Scalise recognize that theres a significant enough outcry from lawmakers to have an up-or-down vote
on Obamas plan. The issue came up at a closed House briefing Thursday, and W hite

House officials

reiterated that its their strong preference to have the language included in the government-

funding bill, in order to orchestrate a quick passage. The Republican leadership is considering a few
options. Theres a pending measure to fund the government through mid-December the continuing resolution,
or CR that Congress must pass to avoid a shutdown. As far as the White House is concerned, that creates an
opportunity: add the anti-ISIS provisions to the spending measure and lawmakers can tackle two important tasks at
once. But for many lawmakers, in both parties, its not that simple. Some want to keep the governments lights on,
but have real concerns about the counter-terrorism strategy. Others arent comfortable with combining these two

Others want to take more time, beyond the end

of the fiscal year that ends in 19 days. For those of us who believe Congress has a constitutional
important-but-unrelated measures on principle.

obligation to weigh in, the fact that lawmakers are debating how, and not whether, to move forward is itself a sign
of unexpected progress. But that doesnt mean the road ahead will be easy. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), a member of

the House Democratic leadership, said he expects a two-step process in which

Congress takes up a bill in the short term to support training anti-ISIS rebels ,
and then after the election, lawmakers would take up consideration of a larger authorization for the use of military
force. But this is only one option. Members could also take up one bill related to the ISIS mission, which includes
both rebel support and presidential authorization. If the two are split, both could receive votes before Congress
leaves town, or maybe just one. Its all up in the air. The key, however, remains the same: theres been a marked
shift in the direction of the debate. Whereas it seemed clear that Congress wanted no part of this discussion, at
least not before the election, the real momentum on Capitol Hill is now pointing in the opposite direction. Ed
OKeefe and Robert Costa added, House

Republican leaders moved quickly Thursday to

broadly support President Obamas plan for an open-ended campaign to combat the Islamic State
but the mechanics of how they will do so wont be determined for several
days.
No thumpers they were all pre-speech
Tomasky 9/12 (Michael Tomasky, writer for the Daily Beast, Will the House GOP
Stop the War on ISIS? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/12/will-thehouse-gop-stop-the-war-on-isis.html) swap
Fast background: Congress has to pass a continuing resolution by September 30 or well have a government

it has to pass it within the next few days , because the

Congress is going on recess so members can go back home
and campaign. In an election year, no one on the GOP side wants to risk a government
shutdown (check thatTed Cruz still kind of does!). The two parties are mostly arguing about
the Export-Import Bank, the newest piece of coal for the tea party fire, but thats the kind of thing
they usually agree at the last minute to extend for another six months. But that
was the pre-ISIS state of play. Then we all saw the beheading videos, and fighting the Islamic State
became a matter of urgency. Obama had asked Congress for $500 million in aid to the
Syrian rebels back in June, but Congress, in its laconic, congressional way, was originally going to wait
until next year to get around to that. But now the administration wants that $500 million
which is actually part of a larger $2 billion request that would include other money
for operations in Iraq and Ukraineto be passed now. And it wants it included in the CR, as
they call it. As you probably know, the House Republicans met Thursday morning in the
aftermath of Obamas speech to figure out how to proceed . As you probably also know, they
shutdown again. Actually, in practical terms,
Jewish holidays are coming and

didnt figure it out. Some support Obamas requestJohn Boehner does, and the relevant committee chairmen.
Others, of course, dont trust Obama. Some want to keep the Syria money in the CR. Others want to pry it out and
have two votes, one on government funding and one on the Syria dough.

2NC UQ Wall Wake

Strike approval for ISIS in Syria will pass now delays could be
a game changer
Rogin 9/2/14 (Josh, s senior correspondent for national security and politics for The Daily Beast. He
previously worked at Newsweek, Foreign Policy magazine, Congressional Quarterly, Federal Computer Week
magazine, and Japans leading daily newspaper, After Steven Sotloff Murder, Congress Demands a Vote on
Obamas ISIS War, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/02/after-steven-sotloff-murder-congressdemands-a-vote-on-obama-s-isis-war.html)

leading lawmakers from both

parties are calling for a bigger role in the U.S. war against the terrorist
group. Leading lawmakers in charge of foreign policy reacted Tuesday to the
reported beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by increasing their calls
for more congressional involvement and oversight of President Obamas war on ISIS. The
latest apparent ISIS atrocity against an American citizen added to the congressional
anger at the Obama administration for what many critics call an incomplete and unclear plan to confront the
group both in Iraq and Syria, following President Obamas admission last week that
We dont have a strategy yet for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The
two leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Tuesday that they want
to lead the charge for more congressional oversight by holding hearings
and forcing a vote on Obamas ISIS war within 60 days of the commencement of
airstrikes in Iraq last month. The beheading of poor Mr. Sotloff really just brings back that we are
In the wake of ISISs latest alleged killing of an American journalist,

dealing with a dangerous adversaryCongress needs to play a vital role and we are determined that the House
Foreign Affairs Committee will lead the way, said Rep. Eliot Engel, ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. We believe that before the president can continue beyond 60 days of doing airstrikes in Iraq or
anyplace else, he would have to come to Congress and get Congresss authority to continue. Engel and the
committees chairman, Rep. Ed Royce, spoke to reporters via conference call from Israel on Tuesday. Royce said
Secretary of State John Kerry, who will travel to the region this week, must come before Congress and present a
strategy for defeating ISIS and put it up for a vote by the beginning of next month. We are scheduling a hearing
upon our return and requesting the secretary of state to present a plan, a strategy focused on rolling back ISIS,
defeating ISIS through the use of airstrikes and the support of those with common interests, Royce said. We
anticipate there will be a vote on authorization of the use of force for such a plan. That would come within the 60day window. Shortly after beginning airstrikes against ISIS in early August, Obama notified Congress of the
military action consistent with the War Powers Resolution, which gives the executive branch 60 days to wage war
before coming to Congress for authorization. That notification said Obama was striking ISIS in Iraq to protect U.S.
personnel in Erbil and prevent a potential act of genocide against the Yazidi minorities. That 60-day window would
expire in early October. Congress returns from recess next week and has two weeks of session before adjourning
again until after the election. The

White House has made two additional notifications

since first striking ISIS, including one Monday to inform Congress
that Obama authorized the U.S. military to conduct targeted airstrikes in
support of an operation to deliver humanitarian assistance to the town of Amirli,
where thousands of Shia Turkomen have been cut off from receiving food, water, and medical supplies for two
months by ISIL, said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. Other leading lawmakers,
including Senate Foreign Relations Near East Subcommittee Chairman Tim Kaine, have called on
Obama to come to Congress for permission if he wants to continue the air
war against ISIS past the beginning of October. Obama didnt ask Congress before striking Libya in 2011,
under the War Powers Resolution

but he did start the process for congressional approval last year to strike the Assad regime in Syria before calling off
those strikes at the last minute. Still reeling from Obamas August 28 declaration that the White House lacks a

top lawmakers in both parties called on

the president Tuesday to get one fast and tell Congress and the American
people what it is.
strategy for confronting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria,

Dont buy any older evidence Wolfs bill introduction changed

the game.
Boyle 9/3/14 (Matthew Boyle, Political Analyist, FRANK WOLF TO INTRODUCE BILL AUTHORIZING
MILITARY ACTION AGAINST ISIS, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/03/Frank-Wolf-To-Introduce-BillCalling-For-Congressional-Authorization-For-Military-Action-Against-ISIS)

Obama hasnt consulted Americas legislative branch on

what to do about the ISIS threat, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA)a national security hawk from Virginia
is stepping forward himself to introduce legislation that would
congressionally authorize military action against ISIS and other terror
threats in the region. It isnt enough for the Congress to just say the administration isnt doing enough
Though President Barack

then not participate, Wolf told Breitbart News in a phone interview. He continued: The Congress has the ability to
declare war under the Constitution. I think the Congress has to be involved in this. I think you also almost have to
do what President [George H.W.] Bush did with regard to Desert Storm. If you put together a coalition of regional
powersthey had the Saudis, even Syria was involved. You had all the countries out in the region involved. You had
all of NATO involvedAmericans cannot do this alone. We need to bring in all of this regional power.

Wolfs

bill, which he will introduce when Congress returns from recess next week, wouldaccording to Wolfs office
authorize U.S. military force against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS)
and al Qaeda and its affiliates, like al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram, while
encouraging close coordination with NATO and regional allies on any action. Wolf, in his interview with Breitbart
News about the forthcoming bill, said hes puzzled that the president at first did not have any strategy yet to deal
with ISIS, and that now the president thinks ISIS can be a manageable problem. I dont know what the word
manageable means, Wolf said. I saw the comment. How do you manage it? They have spread now from Syria
to the suburbs of Baghdad. They have Mosul. You have 140 Americans, at least, with American passports who have
gone over there to fight with them. We have never had this happen before. 9/11 were mainly Saudis and some
other nations. Wolf said

the threat to the United States is very, very big.

Framing issue recency matters for uniqueness it was a

much tougher vote at the end of August but ISIS killed another
hostage, Stephen Sotloff which increased Congressional
appetite for a vote
Rusling 9/5/14 Philippines News Agency (Matthew, Analysis: U.S. may intensify air raids in Iraq,
unlikely to send combat troops factiva)

Obama is unlikely to put U.S. combat troops on the ground, as he is concerned about his
will likely ramp up
the U.S. air campaign. "When the Iraqi and Kurdish ground component of an overall anti-ISIS military
However, experts say

legacy, and wants to be known as the president who ended the war in Iraq. Instead, he

package has been better prepared and armed, the tempo of U.S. and possibly other NATO airstrikes against ISIS will

Many in the Congress are on board with such increased

U.S. air involvement. In reaction to the Islamic State radicals' beheading of
American journalist Steven Sotloff, leading lawmakers on both sides of the
isle this week called for a greater U.S. roll to fight what they believe is a deadly terror threat.
For his part, Obama would not be averse to toughening air attacks, and the
Congress would likely approve such a move, Republican strategist Ford O'Connell told
rise markedly," White said.

Xinhua. "Congress is pretty much prepared to authorize him to use more force," O'Connell said.

There are only 12 days total to get it done

OToole 8/25/14 (Molly,staff for Defense One, National Journal Online, Obama, Iraq, and the
Coming War-Powers Fight With Congress National Journal Online, factiva)
If interagency legal teams determine that the 2001 AUMF applies to the fight against the Islamic State, it would
simply be a matter of sending a memorandum to Congress, the Senate aide said. Operations could then continue in

If the administration decides to formally

expand the mission in Iraq into a broader campaign against the Islamic
State, Obama would almost certainly need to seek new authorization . If
the administration doesn't get separate authorization, the 60-day limit
should hit right at Congress's most vulnerable, and busiest, time. Once
Congress returns from its long summer recess, it has only 12 days of work
before departing for October's run-up to the midterm elections . On Oct. 7,
60 days after Obama's announcement of air strikes, both chambers won't
even be in session.
Iraq with "blanket legal cover," and without a vote.

Internal Link

2NC Internal Link

There are only 12 days total to get it done
OToole 8/25/14 (Molly,staff for Defense One, National Journal Online, Obama, Iraq, and the
Coming War-Powers Fight With Congress National Journal Online, factiva)
If interagency legal teams determine that the 2001 AUMF applies to the fight against the Islamic State, it would
simply be a matter of sending a memorandum to Congress, the Senate aide said. Operations could then continue in

If the administration decides to formally

expand the mission in Iraq into a broader campaign against the Islamic
State, Obama would almost certainly need to seek new authorization . If
the administration doesn't get separate authorization, the 60-day limit
should hit right at Congress's most vulnerable, and busiest, time. Once
Congress returns from its long summer recess, it has only 12 days of work
before departing for October's run-up to the midterm elections . On Oct. 7,
60 days after Obama's announcement of air strikes, both chambers won't
even be in session.
Iraq with "blanket legal cover," and without a vote.

Congress will prey on obamas authority if they smell blood in

the water
Howley 9/3/14 (Patrick, Political Reporter, Boehner: Obama Clearly Has No ISIS Strategy, Is Required
To Ask Congress For War Authority Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/03/boehner-obama-clearly-has-no-isisstrategy/#ixzz3CK12zLGR)

Obama would need to ask Congress

for authority to go to war with ISIS and that the president clearly has no
strategy to deal with the terrorist group in either Iraq or Syria.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner said that President

I think under existing authorizations from the Congress, he has the ability to do this in Iraq, Boehner said Tuesday
night in a phone interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitts fill-in, California Rep. John Campbell. The
interview occurred shortly after ISIS released a video showing its beheading of a second American journalist.

questionable whether he has the authority to do this in

Syria, Boehner said. You know, the threat from ISIS goes back well over a year. And
the crisis in Syrias been going on now for over two years. And weve asked the
Its, I think its

president, asked the president what is your strategy to deal with Syria. And clearly, theres no strategy thats
developed there.
Until

the president is willing to lay out a plan, the Congress has very few
options ahead of it, Boehner said.
the president has provided the notification of some of these strikes ,
theres some ambiguity there in terms of how much
authority in Iraq did he have. But if hes going after ISIS, he would have, I think he
would have to provide a war powers notification to the Congress. And then
it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt
with the issue or not, Boehner added.
Well,

even in Iraq, because

AT: Obama Strategy First

The area is murky airstrikes depend on CONGRESSIONAL
APPROVAL
Trujillo 9/3/14 (Mario, The Hill, Boehner: Congress limited until Obama outlines ISIS strategy,
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/216476-boehner-congress-limited-until-obama-outlines-isisstrategy#ixzz3CJyVMCM5)

Obama has authority to target ISIS in Iraq, but it is

"questionable" whether that authority extends to airstrikes against the
group in Syria. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said he would introduce legislation to give
Obama the option to launch strikes targeting ISIS in Syria. The Speaker did
not answer directly when asked if the House would easily grant Obama
authorization. "But if hes going after ISIS, he would have, I think he would have to provide a War Powers notification to
Boehner said he believes

the Congress," he said. "And then it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt with the issue or not."

The threat extends further than Iraq and Syria, Boehner warned. He noted it touches from "Libya
to Gaza to Lebanon to Syria and Iraq." Obama vowed to degrade and destroy ISIS Wednesday
morning, after the administration authenticated a video Tuesday showing the
second beheading of a U.S. journalist by the group.

AT: Thumpers (MUST READ)

Thumpers that are ON THE DOCKET are incoherent. The DA is
about the UPSET of the congressional agenda. ISIS vote needs
to happen immediately to prevent escalation. New unpopular
pieces of legislation INHERENTLY require debating and time,
the same is not true with un-necessary legislative priorities
like immigration.
ISIS vote first
Caldwell 9/3/14 (Leigh, CNN Why it took Obama so long to address his no ISIS strategy comments
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/03/politics/obama-isis-response/)

the President wants to engage coalition partners, create a

meaningful military plan and explain it to the public. He also said he might
need approval from Congress. So why did that take so long to respond to that rare moment of
In other words,

candor that resulted in ongoing criticism from every corner of the political spectrum and provide another
opportunity for critics to define his foreign policy as feckless and aimless? Dr. Nussaibah Younis, senior researcher at
the Project on Middle East Democracy, said Obama's slow response to his critics is characteristic of his approach to
foreign policy. "Slowly he's getting there," said Younis, an Iraq expert who has been warning about the growing
threat of ISIS and is critical of the President's "cautious" approach to ISIS in Iraq. He wants strategic, limited and
immediate airstrikes in Syria. "The gravity of the situation is filtering through and I think that's progress." The
President again fell victim to that perception again Wednesday. During that same news conference in Estonia,
Obama gave mixed messages of U.S. goals against the group that effectively erased the border between Iraq and
Syria. On one hand he said the goal is to "degrade and destroy," then appeared to move back from the "destroy"
part of the phrase by saying the goal against ISIS is to ensure the group is "manageable." It is another instance that
opens him up to criticism from those who want aggressive military action as well as confusion on the part of an
American public that wants answers. "He left a little ambiguous what the goal is today," David Gergen, a former
adviser to four presidents, said Wednesday on CNN. An administration official defended the President, saying he did
not deliver two conflicting messages, but noted that this is going to be a time-consuming fight that will begin with
managing ISIS's threat and eventually lead to its destruction. Now that this is the second messaging problem the
President has had in less than a week when talking about the terrorist group, Major Gen. James "Spider" Marks said
the President's missives must be more clear. "Words are very, very important," Marks said on CNN, adding that his
messages are mixed because the U.S.'s lack of a strategy. Regardless of messaging, the President's restrained
strategy does have its defenders. Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's "GPS," said that the President's response to ISIS in
Syria, which is embroiled in a three-year long civil war, is appropriate. He said one important consideration is
whether the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be strengthened if ISIS is defeated there. "In
the Middle East, the enemy of your enemy is still your enemy," Zakaria said on CNN's "New Day" on Wednesday.
The external pressure put on Obama to act is harmful, Zakaria said. "This is where the media pressure actually is
unhelpful to having a strong foreign policy," he said. After ISIS beheaded American journalist Steve Sotloff, the
second American in less than one month, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that caution is the

The President will begin to

mold his strategy at the NATO summit where he will attempt to organize a
coalition to address ISIS in Syria. And next week, Congress is back in
Washington where debate about U.S. response to ISIS is expected .
President's ally because ISIS's actions are "meant to get us to overreact."

ISIS needs to be resolved before the session ends thats 1NC

Rogin any risk the plan pushes it off the agenda triggers the
DA
ISIS strikes are congresss top priority all other bills are
being put on the stopper
Harress 9/3/14 (Christopher, Sotloff Beheading Prompts Congressional Bill On Striking ISIS In Syria,
ibtimes.com, September 3, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/sotloff-beheading-prompts-congressional-bill-striking-isissyria-1677328)

As President Barack Obama addressed the world from Talinn, Estonia, on Wednesday, saying
that the U.S. and its allies would "degrade and destroy" ISIS, members of
Congress were calling for more direct action against the Sunni militant group that has
horrified the world with its atrocities in recent months. The bipartisan outrage over the beheading of
Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist to be beheaded by ISIS in as many weeks, has prompted
Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, to introduce legislation that would
grant Obama congressional authority to strike ISIS, aka the Islamic State, in Syria. This
will ensure theres no question that the president has the legal authority he needs to use airstrikes in Syria, Nelson
said. We must go after ISIS right away because the U.S. is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop

Nelson won't be able to introduce the bill

until next week, when Congress returns from its recess, which may see the
National Defense Authorization Act 2015 held up again as bills are
inserted to deal with the increasing threat of Russia and ISIS. The bill is currently being
held up in the Senate. Nelson is not alone in his support for action. It is
this group thats intent on barbaric cruelty. But

chilling that this type of madness is now part of their operation as they take cities across the area, Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-California, said on CNN in a joint interview with his committees ranking
Democrat, Eliot Engel of New York. Both

Royce and Engel want to see airstrikes hit ISIS

training camps in order to stem the flow of fighters to the group. The renewed
interest from Congress to intervene in Syria comes one year after an Obama-led drive to strike Syrian President
Bashar Assad fell apart. Congress was reluctant to allow the United States to become embroiled in another overseas

now, as the U.S. conducts airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq in

response to the Islamic militant group's continuing brutal rampage, the
threat from ISIS in Syria is one that Congress appears more willing to deal
with. It is time we act decisively against ISIL [another name for ISIS] wherever it resides.
conflict, but

Whenever American air power has been employed, in coordination with reliable partners on the ground, ISIL has
been devastated. Its a tactic that should be aggressively pursued in both Syria and Iraq, said Sen. Lindsey
Graham, a South Carolina Republican, on Tuesday.

AT: Thumpers (Drum)

Issues dont cost capital until theyre at the finish line
Drum 10 [Kevin, Political Blogger, Mother Jones, http://motherjones.com/kevindrum/2010/03/immigration-coming-back-burner]

Not to pick on Ezra or anything, but this attitude betrays a surprisingly common misconception about political

political dogs never bark until an issue becomes an

active one. Opposition to Social Security privatization was pretty mild
until 2005, when George Bush turned it into an active issue. Opposition to
healthcare reform was mild until 2009, when Barack Obama turned it into an
active issue. Etc. I only bring this up because we often take a look at polls and think
they tell us what the public thinks about something. But for the most part,
they don't.1 That is, they don't until the issue in question is squarely on the table
and both sides have spent a couple of months filling the airwaves with
their best agitprop. Polling data about gays in the military, for example, hasn't changed a lot over the
past year or two, but once Congress takes up the issue in earnest and the Focus on the Family
issues in general. The fact is that

newsletters go out, the push polling starts, Rush Limbaugh picks it up, and Fox News creates an incendiary graphic

that's when the polling will tell you something .

And it will probably tell you something different from what it tells you now. Immigration was bubbling
along as sort of a background issue during the Bush administration too until 2007,
when he tried to move an actual bill. Then all hell broke loose. The same thing
to go with its saturation coverage well,

will happen this time, and without even a John McCain to act as a conservative point man for a moderate solution.
The political environment is worse now than it was in 2007, and I'll be very surprised if it's possible to make any
serious progress on immigration reform. "Love 'em or hate 'em," says Ezra, illegal immigrants "aren't at the
forefront of people's minds." Maybe not. But they will be soon.

AT: Thumpers (Immigration)

Wont happen until after the election
Sink 9/5/14 (Justin, The Hill, Obama: Immigration action soon
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/216792-obama-immigration-action-soon)

Obama vowed Friday to announce executive actions to address

immigration "soon, though he did not specifically commit to moving
before the November elections. The president said he has received some of the proposals and
President

recommendations for executive actions developed by Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson. "I suspect that on my flight back this will be part of my reading, taking a look at some of the
specifics we've looked at, and I will be making an announcement soon," Obama told reporters at a press conference
following the NATO summit in Wales. Obama said his actions would include efforts to move resources to better
address the surge of child migrants who have flooded across the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as finding a way to
encourage legal immigration. High-tech companies and immigration groups have been lobbying the
administration to expand the number of green cards available to specialized workers and the relatives of permanent
residents. The president said he also hoped his administration could find a way "to encourage legal immigration
and give people some path so that they can start paying taxes and pay a fine and learn English, and be able to not
look over their shoulder, but be legal since theyve been living here for quite some time." Advocates have
suggested that the president could expand his deferred action program which allows certain children brought to
the country illegally to work legally and avoid deportation proceedings to cover a broader group of individuals.
"My intention is, in the absence of action by Congress, Im going to do what I can do within the legal constraints of
my office, because its the right thing to do for the country," Obama said. But while Obama said he'd be considering
those steps "fairly soon," he did not say whether the announcement would come ahead of the midterm elections.

Vulnerable Senate Democrats have begged the president to hold off on

any move until after November, fearing that any steps Obama takes could motivate the Republican
base and alienate independent voters. Earlier this week, press secretary Josh Earnest
conceded that Obama could wait until after the midterms to act.

Obama wont act before the election

NPR 9/5/14 - Don Gonyea talks to with NPR Senior Political Correspondent Mara Liaison and Robert Costa of
The Washington Post about the issues and key races in this fall's midterm elections. (Run-Up To Midterm Elections
Overshadowed By Other News http://www.npr.org/2014/09/05/345997442/run-up-to-midterm-electionsovershadowed-by-other-news)

the big domestic issue this

summer has been whether the president would use some sort of executive
action to tackle the immigration crisis. How likely does that look at this point?
LIASSON: He is going to use executive action to tackle the immigration crisis. The question was
whether he would do it before Election Day, and now that looks less and
less likely. He has been under pressure from immigration groups. And he has said he will act to expand
deportation relief beyond the dreamers. But the White House has changed its mind about
the politics of doing executive orders, that Republicans would see as amnesty, before
Election Day. When the president originally said he would act without
delay, after he got recommendations by the end of the summer, the White
House simply wasn't anticipating how big an issue this would become on
the campaign trail from Republicans. The White House has also been getting a tremendous amount of
GONYEA: OK, we're going to get to the Senate in a moment. First, Mara,

pushback from Senate Democrats up for reelection in red states. They do not want the president to do this before
Election Day.

AT: Thumper (Border)

Its not a major priority so its not causing a fight
Hallerman 9/5/14 (Tamar, Roll Call staff , Congress' To-Do List: Border Funding, Stopgap
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress_to_do_list_border_funding_stopgap-236018-1.html)

House Republicans in recent days have hinted that the border

supplemental has fallen off their radar as the administration has also
made less noise about the issue. The emergency spending bill was conspicuously left off the email
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California sent to House Republicans about the September agenda on Thursday.

Wont even be a vote

Davis 9/4/14 (Susan, USA Today, Border funding bill loses steam in Congress
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/09/04/border-bill-congress/15093657/)

The White House request in July for $3.7 billion in emergency spending to deal with a surge
of undocumented minors has fallen to the wayside and may not get a vote
at all as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill for a three-week legislative sprint before Election Day. Aides to House
and Senate leaders and the Appropriations committees said the number of undocumented
minors at the border has been dropping and existing funds are likely to
cover the immediate needs. The aides spoke on background because negotiations are ongoing.

AT: Thumper (Shutdown)

The GOP leadership will avoid it sees it as a threat to
midterms
Hallerman 9/5/14 (Tamar, Roll Call staff, Congress' To-Do List: Border Funding, Stopgap
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress_to_do_list_border_funding_stopgap-236018-1.html)

With control of both chambers of Congress within reach for the first time in years,
GOP leaders will try to clear the way for Republican candidates as they head into
the final campaign stretch. They want to avoid another bruising government
shutdown when fiscal 2014 funding runs out after Sept. 30, and minimize awkward votes
that could disadvantage incumbents. That means leaders will work to keep
a CR free of too many spending anomalies to avoid sapping Republican support and
fend off policy riders that could jeopardize Democratic votes needed to
move it through the Senate.

Strikes Core

2NC Solves Conflict Escalation

Only congressional approval of military force against ISIS
solves conflict escalation.
DePetris 9/2/14 (Daniel, Foreign Policy consultant, wannabe politico and avid blogger, Why Obama
Should Ask Congress for an ISIS AUMF, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-r-depetris/why-obama-should-askcong_b_5745460.html)
President Barack Obama and his national security advisers have some serious thinking to do over the next week on
the scope, duration and lethality of U.S. military action against the organization calling itself the Islamic State. To

the president has relied upon the Article II powers that are granted to his office by
the U.S. Constitution, such as the ability of the Commander-in- Chief to take limited military
action when U.S. citizens are at risk. Just this past weekend, President Obama ordered the U.S. Air
Force to pummel Islamic State checkpoints, armored trucks, and mortar positions to break a
date,

two-month siege of a small, agricultural Turkomen town that was cut off nearly all attempts to bring in food, water,
and medical supplies to the people who lived there. In this case, the need to ensure that a genocide didn't occur
was given as the sole explanation for the latest bombing.
U.S. Central Command has conducted nearly 120 airstrikes as of August 31, 2014. The number may seem high, but

the military force that President Obama has used thus far is confined to
specific geographical areas in northern Iraq in danger of being taken over by the jihadists,
such as Irbil, the Mosul Dam, and now the Iraqi village of Amerli. As long as the U.S. Air Force is employed in this
way, the White House can claim that it has all of the legal authority it needs under Article II to defend U.S. national
security interests and the safety of American citizens and facilities in the region. Indeed, members of Congress have
been relatively quiet on the president's decision to launch the full weight of the U.S. Armed Forces, and when they
have spoken about it, they tend to support the president's legal argument.

If the Obama administration, on the other hand, finds it necessary to expand U.S.
military activity against the Islamic State into Syria (a choice it will have to make if there is any
possibility of degrading the organization's military capability in the short-term), President Obama will
quickly face a wave of pressure on Capitol Hill on the need to submit a new
Authorization for the Use of Military Force for congressional debate and
approval. In fact, the push for greater congressional buy-in is already there, with Senators Tim Kaine (D - VA),
Chris Murphy (D - CT) and Bob Corker (R - TN) lobbying for a vote.

Congress must formally approve the initiation of

significant military action," Kaine expressed in a written statement. "[I]t is what the framers of the
"I have long stressed that

Constitution intended, and Congress and the Executive have a responsibility to do the hard work to build a political
consensus in support of our military missions." Sen. Murphy was even more blunt in an interview with Yahoo News
on Sunday, August 31: "We

have to pass a new authorization [for use] of military

force in order to continue hostilities against ISIS."
After getting embarrassed last summer when both houses of Congress were increasingly reluctant to grant
President Obama the authority to retaliate against Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons on civilians, the
White House is no doubt reluctant to try the same route again. Any AUMF request in an election year will inevitably
seen by Democrat lawmakers in tough election contests as a politically amateurish thing for a Democratic president
to do to his own party. And Republicans in Congress will attempt to use any AUMF vote as a way to remind
Americans going to the polls in November about the president's (and by extension, the Democratic Party's) poor
numbers on foreign policy.
But fear aside, Obama should go directly to Congress for a new AUMF -- that is, if he plans to embark on the kind of
large-scale, comprehensive anti-IS strategy in both Iraq and Syria that his own Secretary of State, John Kerry,
pushed for in an August 29 New York Times op-ed.

would meet several objectives, the first being a much-needed

clarification on the legal underpinnings that guide the use of U.S. military
force against a constantly amorphous and evolving international terrorist
Doing so

enemy. The 2001 AUMF, which was a mere 60 words passed overwhelmingly three days after the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks, has been on the books for nearly thirteen years and has been stretched to the breaking point
in order to accommodate threats emanating from al Qaeda associates and affiliates. Although the Islamic State may
have been the spawn of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the very public breakup between Ayman alZawahiri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi means that the 2001 AUMF cannot be used as the domestic legal basis of an
anti-IS military campaign (it's difficult for even the most clever constitution lawyer to argue that a document

Only a new
authorization could resolve the outstanding questions that legal scholars
and lawmakers continue to have on the war powers issue post-9/11.
justifying the targeting of al Qaeda could be used to target a group that wasn't formed until 2004).

going to Congress to obtain buy-in would provide the president with

the bipartisan, domestic backing that only the people's representatives
can provide on the eve of a major military operation . If the United States
works best when it speaks with one voice, as President Obama said last summer, allowing
Secondly,

lawmakers to have an open, objective and healthy national debate before voting is only appropriate.

a new AUMF directed solely against the Islamic State would serve an
incredibly useful political function for the White House. Instead of being the one actor
tied to the success or failure of a military operation , the administration would spread the
responsibility and costs across two, co-equal branches of government. If things go bad for U.S. personnel or
Finally,

if the strategy is too slow to produce lasting damage on the terrorist group, members of Congress who clamor for
action but fail to step up and vote will not be able to sit back, go on national television and engage in the familiar
Monday-morning quarterbacking that has come to define contemporary Washington politics. Both branches,
Congress and the White House, will own the successes and shortfalls of the operation.

AT: Strikes Bad

Turns are non-unique the US is already bombing ISIS in Iraq
the only question of the disad is whether Obama seeks
authorization to extend strikes to Syria
Not dealing with ISIS now makes conflict inevitable in the
future
Gay 8/7/14 (John, assistant managing editor at The National Interest The Smart Way to Bomb ISIS The
National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-smart-way-bomb-isis-11033)

a confrontation between
America and the Islamic State is probably inevitableif not now, then at
some point in the future. ISISs gains profoundly destabilized the region,
Going back into Iraq will be a tough sell for Obama at any scale. But

with diplomatic alignments put under pressure, vital infrastructure captured and large refugee flows. Kurdish

the broader breakdown of the regions old colonial borders

have both become more likely. The magnetic pull of jihad is growing. Iraqs internal
independence and

politics have grown even rougher; externally, Iran and Russia have increased their influence in Baghdad. An effort to
contain or push back ISIS, in this light, is certainly worth considering. What factors should shape Americas
approach?

Intervention only solution

Levitt 9/4(2014. Matthew- he Fromer-Wexler fellow and director of the Washington Institutes
Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. While still risky, military intervention against ISIS
may be the only good option for President Obama. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/riskymilitary-intervention-isis-option-article-1.1927277//GH)

If President Obama is serious that the objective now is to degrade and

destroy ISIS, then U.S. air strikes must be stepped up targeting the
Islamic State. The .U.S cannot rely simply on military advisers to the Iraqi
Army, an Iraqi political agreement, and a few air strikes here and there.
Nor can it stop at the Iraq-Syria border because ISIS certainly does not.
Destroying ISIS will only happen if it is hit hard in both northern Iraq and
eastern Syria. It may be the case, as the President has repeatedly said, that there is no military solution in
Iraq or Syria. Yet it is hard to imagine a viable political solution without an
improvement in the military situation. Obama staked much of his reputation on getting
American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and it does not surprise that he is not keen on returning. But the most
extreme Islamist group the world has ever seen now controls huge swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria.

it is hard to see
how military involvement could have made the situation worse. Now, it is
hard to see how the situation will get better without it.
Although Obama has kept the U.S. out of the conflict on the basis of dont do stupid stuff,

AT: Strikes Fail

Intel solves strikes WE WILL RAIN HELLFIRE on those
terrorists
Rilanian & Pace 8/26/14 (KEN DILANIAN and JULIE PACE, the Associated Press, quoting US
military commanders, Possible airstrikes in Syria raise more questions,
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/08/26/5129562/top-general-us-needs-more-info.html#.VAf6qPldVzI)

The intelligence gathered by U.S. military surveillance flights over

Syria could support a broad bombing campaign against the Islamic State
militant group, but current and former U.S. officials differ on whether air power would significantly degrade
what some have called a "terrorist army." Further complicating the plans, any military action against
Islamic State militants in Syria would also have the effect of putting the
U.S. on the same side as Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose ouster the Obama administration
WASHINGTON

has sought for years. The Islamic State group is headquartered in the Syrian city of Raqqah and has been fighting
the Assad government, though it is also at war with moderate rebels who have received arms and funding from the

The group, which controls a large part of eastern Syria, crossed into Iraq earlier this year and
has captured much of the Sunni sections of northern and western Iraq,
prompting U.S. airstrikes to protect American personnel in that region. U.S.
officials say that surveillance drones and spy planes had begun flying over Syria
U.S.

on the orders of President Barack Obama, who is considering a series of military options against the extremist group
that also killed an American, journalist James Foley, and is holding an American woman hostage. In recent months,

the threat from the Islamic State has eclipsed the issue of Assad, who escaped
U.S. military action after Obama pulled back planned airstrikes one year ago in order to consult with Congress.

The hostage-takings have galvanized a U.S. government that already had

been trying to respond to the militant group's surge with airstrikes that
seem to have the public's approval. The U.S. military has been bombing the Islamic State
group's positions for weeks, helping break its hold on a dam near the city of Mosul. U.S. attacks destroyed two more
militant vehicles Tuesday near the Kurdish city of Irbil, bringing to 98 the total number of U.S. air strikes in Iraq

The decision to expand surveillance flights into Syria will boost

intelligence gathering there, because the flights provide far better imagery
and other data than do spy satellites in space orbit. Drones, for example, can
hover over targets for hours, and both drones and spy planes can carry equipment that intercepts
since Aug. 8.

ground communications. The U.S. is not cooperating or sharing intelligence with the Assad government, Pentagon
and State Department spokesmen said. But the U.S. flights are occurring in eastern Syria, away from most of Syria's
air defenses. And experts expressed doubt that Syria would attempt to shoot down American aircraft that are
paving the way for a possible bombing campaign against Assad's enemies. As Obama contemplates options,
military officials are sorting through what kind of campaign it would take to defeat or contain the Islamic State

Targeted drone missile strikes

against al-Qaida groups in Yemen and Pakistan had significant impact,
American officials say, but only after many months of intensive, on-the-ground intelligence gathering that
would be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate in Iraq and Syria. Yet some air war planners argue that since
the Islamic State group acts more like an army - massing in large
formations of vehicles and moving over open terrain - a sustained air
campaign could smash it. "You can make a big impact on ISIL by actually
using air power as a tool," said retired Gen. Charles Wald, who commanded the air campaign that
group. Obama has ruled out sending large ground formations.

drove the Taliban from power after the Sept. 11 attacks, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
"You could kick their butt if you had the right kind of campaign ." It would require
the insertion of special operations troops or CIA officers on the ground helping direct the bombing, as happened in
late 2001, Wald said. It would also require a sustained, massive air campaign, said David Deptula, who planned the
bombing campaign against Saddam Hussein's forces in the 1991 Gulf War. " Air

applied like a thunderstorm,

power needs to be
overwatch with

not a drizzle," Deptula said, entailing "24-7

force application on every move of ISIL personnel." One senior congressional official
said intelligence suggests that such an approach has its limits, because the Islamic State militants would be likely to
melt into civilian areas as soon as the U.S. began bombing. Such a move by militants would complicate further
bombing efforts, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss intelligence matters by name and spoke on
condition of anonymity. But if the Islamic State group hides among civilians in cities, Wald said, that may constitute

In an effort to avoid unintentionally strengthening the Syrian

government, the White House could seek to balance strikes against the Islamic
State with attacks on Assad regime targets. However, that option is largely unappealing to
the president given that it could open the U.S. to the kind of long-term
commitment to Syria's stability that Obama has sought to avoid.
a sort of victory.

Their evidence assumes unilateral US action - Obama just

formed an international coalition that trains allied ground
forces to work in conjunction with strikes
Cooper 9/6/14 (Helene, U.S. and Allies Form Coalition Against ISIS New York Times, factiva)
Obama administration said Friday that it had formed a coalition of countries to
counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, unveiling a military and
political campaign that officials said could eventually serve as a model for
fighting extremist groups around the world. In a hastily organized meeting on the outskirts
of the NATO summit meeting, diplomats and military officials from the United States, Britain,
France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark huddled on what they called
a two-pronged strategy: working to bolster allies fighting on the ground in
Iraq and Syria, while the United States, alone so far, bombs Sunni militants from
the air, so long as they are in Iraq. There is no containment policy for ISIL, Secretary of State John Kerry said
The

at the beginning of the meeting, referring to the militant group by another acronym, the Islamic State in Iraq and
the Levant. Theyre an ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi-state with an
irregular army, and leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will
ultimately come back to haunt us. But he and other officials made clear that at the moment, any ground combat
troops would come from either Iraqi security forces and Kurdish fighters in Iraq, or moderate Syrian rebels opposed
to the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Obviously I think thats a red line for everybody here: no
boots on the ground, Mr. Kerry said. Britain said that no military requests had been made of it as part of the talks.
We are not at the stage for this type of conversation, said an aide to Prime Minister David Cameron. Discussions
focused mainly on a political-led strategy, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance
with diplomatic practice. The discussion, the aide said, was about how we put together the best support and help
for those countries in the region which are in the front of squeezing the threat that is posed by ISIL. Privately, one
diplomat said that the meetings participants, at the level of foreign ministers rather than leaders, indicated that
the United States was still fleshing out its strategy against ISIS. The Americans also are eager to maintain pressure
on Iraq to form an inclusive government as a prerequisite for closer engagement. But some diplomats were also
uncomfortable using a summit meeting of the 28-nation alliance as a backdrop for a smaller group with no NATO

American officials are

hoping to expand the coalition against ISIS to include as many countries
as possible, particularly in the Middle East region. Obama administration officials said privately that in
imprimatur and, except for Turkey, no partners with large Muslim populations.

addition to the countries that attended the meeting Friday morning, the United States was hoping to acquire
intelligence help about the Sunni militants from Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah, was attending the Wales
meeting. United States officials said they also expect Saudi Arabia to contribute to financing and building up
moderate Syrian rebel groups. In addition, Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United
States, said in a statement earlier this week that his country stood ready to join the fight against ISIS. No one has
more at stake than the U.A.E. and other moderate countries in the region that have rejected the regressive Islamist
creed and embraced a different, forward-looking path, the ambassador said. The Emiratis, he said, are ready to
join the international community in an urgent, coordinated and sustained effort to confront a threat that will, if

Enlisting the Sunni neighbors of

Syria and Iraq is crucial, experts said, because airstrikes alone will not be
unchecked, have global ramifications for decades to come.

enough to vanquish ISIS fighters. The Obama administration is also seeking to

pursue a strategy that begins with gathering intelligence, followed by
targeted airstrikes, more robust and better-coordinated support for
moderate rebels, and finally, a political reconciliation process. Administration
officials said amassing support for moderate rebels in Syria was particularly
critical. This summer President Obama set aside $500 million to train and support vetted members of the
moderate opposition to Mr. Assad. Officials say they expect that Congress will approve that request at the beginning
of October.

Authorizing special ops and airstrikes can roll back ISIS

Boot 7/29/14 (Max, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations A Strategy for Defeating ISIS in
Syria and Iraq Congressional Testimony, http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Max%20Boot%20HASC
%20Testimony%20July%2029%202014.pdf)

I wish there were some way to roll back ISISs advances without greater
American military involvement. But there isnt. Again, I stress I am not advocating fighting
another ground war. What I am advocating is a prudent and limited deployment of
American trainers, special operators, air controllers and intelligence
agents whose primary job will be to mobilize indigenous opposition to ISIS .
Such opposition exists because in every country where Islamist
fundamentalists have come to power their Draconian decrees have
triggered a backlash from ordinary people who want to be left alone to live their lives. The
job of our armed forces, our diplomats, and our intelligence community is
to catalyze and channel that backlash to prevent Al Qaedaaligned
extremists from winning their most significant victory since 9/11 . The good
news is that the battle is far from lost. The situation in Iraq may seem hopeless today. But remember
that the outlook appeared even more pessimistic in late 2006 when the senior Marine intelligence officer was
writing off Anbar province and the widespread assumption was that the war was lost. But as General David Petraeus
said back then, Hard is not hopeless. Petraeus and the troops under his command proved that with the success of
the surge which dismantled Al Qaeda in Iraq, brought violence down by 90%, and allowed Iraqi politics to function
again. Similar success can be possible today and without nearly as big a troop commitment as long as we are
skillful in mobilizing and enabling indigenous opposition in both Syria and Iraq to the violent fanatics of ISIS.

Military strikes are vital to stopping ISIS prevents

destabilizing the entire Middle East
Keane and Pletka 8/24/14 - Gen. Keane, a retired four-star general and former vice chief of
staff of the U.S. Army, is the chairman of the Institute for the Study of War. Ms. Pletka is the senior vice president for
foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. (An American-Led Coalition Can Defeat
ISIS Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/articles/jack-keane-and-danielle-pletka-an-american-led-coalition-candefeat-isis-in-iraq-1408919270)

ISIS is at war and wants to control as much territory

as possible. Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon are in the group's sights. The
Islamic State wants to control oil fields, financial and political centers and create a quasi-state
Third, the military component:

with self-proclaimed emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in charge. President Obama has "limited" action to protect
American personnel and selected refugees, but even his tactical air strikes to help reclaim the Mosul Dam and the

A military campaign is needed to

defeat ISIS, not merely stop or contain it. Contrary to some claims, this is not a plan for a new
American ground war in Iraq seeking to reconstitute a failed state. It is a mission to help
Iraqis and Syrians on the ground help themselves. A U.S.-led international
coalition can provide the military capability, including air interdiction to
slow ramp-up of advisers are inadequate to meet the threat.

deny ISIS freedom of movement, take away its initiative to attack at will in
Iraq, and dramatically reduce its sanctuary in Syria. Political and military leaders must
recognize that Iraq and Syria are indivisible in this conflict. The group must be defeated in both places. Chairman of

ISIS cannot be defeated "without addressing

that part of the organization that resides in Syria." Like the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq,
the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey has said

the Free Syrian Army needs heavy weapons, ammunition and supplies. And Washington is also blocking the delivery
of much-needed weapons and equipment already purchased by the Iraqi military. Arming allies to fight a common

U.S. military support will be key: The U.S. Central

Command has a list of ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, including staging
bases for equipment and troops, supply bases, training areas for foreign
fighters, command and control and frontline troop positions . Advisers and trainers
enemy cannot be an afterthought.

are also needed by the thousands, not hundreds, to assist the Peshmerga, reconstitute the Iraqi army, and assist
Sunni tribes now opposing ISIS who must join this fight. Close air support will also be vital. Baghdadi and his senior

U.S. special operations forces should be given the

mission to target, kill and capture ISIS leaders. We targeted senior terrorist leaders once
leaders aren't invulnerable, and

in Iraq and still do in Afghanistan and elsewhere. ISIS should be no different, particularly after its brutal murder of
Foley. None of these steps are sufficient by themselves to defeat a capable, motivated and well-armed terrorist
group. Much will depend on the effectiveness of the combined ground force backed by consistent air power. But

failure means the destabilization of the Middle East, terrible bloodshed and, ultimately,
the murder of more Americans. A comprehensive strategy is the only realistic choice to defeat ISIS, and the time is
long past to get serious.

AT: Obama Wont Do It

The congress will force his hand
Newhauser 9/4/14 (Daniel, National Journal, House Republicans Promise Action on ISIS to Force
Obama's Hand, http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/house-republicans-promise-action-on-isis-20140903)

legislation within the next few weeks, House leaders told their members in a
will
have a plan, and we will have an unfettered and determined approach to make
sure we stop this process that is growing like a cancer in the Middle East,"
That could include

conference call on Wednesday. "The overwhelming consensus was that not only do we need a plan, but we

said Rep. Mark Meadows, a junior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. On the call, Speaker John Boehner told
members that, while traveling the country on behalf of candidates over the past several weeks, leaders heard
considerable anxiety from the public about the militant group and the limited U.S. response thus far. Majority

Obama's response to ISIS' rapid gains, saying it revealed

misplaced priorities of the government bureaucracy. As an example, he seized on
Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized

anarticle on a U.S. Forest Service blogproviding safety tips for making s'mores. Intelligence Committee Chairman
Mike Rogers briefed members on ISIS's growing ranks, noting that Qaida affiliates have been joining the group over
the past several weeks. His committee, along with Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security, and Armed Services, will hold
hearings next week about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the threat it poses to U.S. interests, and the
appropriate U.S. response. That all will likely lead to legislative language, if only in an
attempt to force Obama's hand, said Rep. John Fleming, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. "There was

There have
been increasing calls from within Congress for Obama to act, especially after ISIS
nothing described, but I just got the sense that leadership wants to do something on that."

released a gruesome video showing the beheading of journalist Steven Sotloffthe second such video in as many
weeks. The administration started airstrikes in Iraq last month, and for the action to continue beyond 60 days, an
authorizing resolution might be necessary under the War Powers Act. Leaders of the Foreign Affairs Committee have
already said they want Congress to pass an authorizing bill by the beginning of next month. But with so much
uncertainty about the U.S. strategy and little information coming out of the administration, many lawmakers remain
unclear about the need for such legislation. "For far too long, the Obama administration and the Congress have
been debating whether or not authority exists for action to address this threat," said Republican Rep. Frank Wolf,
who is offering a bill authorizing action. "This

resolution would provide clear authority for

the president and our military, working with coalition partners, to go after
these terrorists, whether in Syria, Iraq, or elsewhere."

2NC Escalation / AT: Troops Now

Theyll be boots on the ground results in Protracted war
which escalates.
Robinson 9/1/14 (Eugene, Political Analyst, Obama and Congress, what are we signing up for in ISIS
battle?, http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/09/01/obama-congress-signing-isis-battle/14948729/)

"rooting out" the cancer that is ISIS "won't be quick" implies that
considerable time is necessary to accomplish certain tasks . What, exactly, might
those tasks be? Is the idea to protect the Kurdish region in the Iraqi northeast,
assume the Shiites in the south will defend themselves, degrade ISIS to the
degree possible with airstrikes alone and wait for the Sunnis in the west
to have another "awakening" and turn against this group of jihadists the way they turned against al-Qaida?
To say that

During the first "awakening," there were tens

of thousands of U.S. troops present who could eliminate al-Qaida leaders
and assets identified by Sunni tribal leaders. Now there are just a few
hundred U.S. advisers in Iraq, and ISIS, by all accounts, is a far more capable and
better-equipped military force than al-Qaida ever was.
If this is the idea, it seems awfully far-fetched.

ISIS as an actual state, the group is managing to hold and

administer huge swaths of territory and has found sources of continuing
revenue gray-market oil sales, kidnapping Europeans for ransom, widespread local extortion that the
As much as we scoff at the notion of

militants probably see as taxation.

Why wouldn't time be on the side of ISIS as it digs in? Doesn't the "rooting out" of the
group become more difficult if it becomes more rooted day by day?

Hagel said recently that ISIS is "beyond anything that we've

seen." He called it "as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen. They're beyond just a
terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical
military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded."
Defense Secretary Chuck

AT: Obama Unilat

Solves terror congressional action is key Obama has no
strategy
McCaughney 9/2/14 (Betsy, The NY Sun, Obamas Lack of a Strategy Puts Focus on Congress

In

Fight Against ISIS, http://www.nysun.com/national/obamas-lack-of-a-strategy-brputs-focus/88829/)

President Obama said last Thursday that he doesnt have a strategy yet to combat ISIS
in the Middle East. Worse is what Obama didnt say not one word about how to prevent ISIS from attacking us
right here in the America. Thats despite security experts warning Congress repeatedly that ISISs gory threats to
spill American blood should be taken seriously.
Compare Mr. Obamas inaction to Prime Minister Camerons decisive action. After British security experts raised the
terrorist threat assessment there to severe, meaning an attack is highly likely, Mr. Cameron called for revoking
passports of British citizens returning from Syria and Iraq and cracking down on jihadist recruiters, even by
censoring the internet and rounding up extremist organizers. These proposals are sparking a lively debate in Britain
over balancing security and civil rights.
Meanwhile, Mr. Cameron worked through the weekend on proposals he brought to the House of Commons Monday
Thats the same weekend President Obama spent at a barbecue, two fundraisers, and the wedding of the White
House chef. Also MIA are Speaker Boehner, still on his 14-state fundraising bus tour, and the Senate majority leader,
Harry Reid, busy politicking in Nevada.

in the White House, When theres a leadership vacuum Congress needs to

step in. That means getting to work on thwarting jihadists with American
or European passports from importing ISIS-style terror here. A year ago, on
August 23, 2013, the then-director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, raised that danger in an ABC News
interview. In January and again in February of this year, Mr. Obamas Director of National Intelligence told Congress

it was a huge concern that ISIS training camps in Syria are preparing
people to go back to their home countries and conduct terrorist acts.
Just days before breaking for August vacation, Congress was alerted again. On July 29, security expert Max Boot
warned that ISIS is a
other expert witnesses.

clear and present danger to America, a warning repeated by several

Spasms of ISIS violence are already occurring

in the West. On May 24, Mehdi Nemmouche,

a Frenchman who spent 11 months fighting with ISIS in Syria before returning to Europe, opened fire at the Jewish
Museum in Brussels, killing four.

AT: Article II Solves

Wont work
Fox 9/3/14 (Lauren, US News, Would Congress Act Against the Islamic State?,
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/03/obama-may-go-to-congress-on-the-islamic-state-but-willlawmakers-act)

The White House has argued that under the War Powers Resolution,
Obama has the ability to intervene for a maximum of 90 days without
congressional approval if he deems there is an imminent threat to the U.S. Yet, while
many members of Congress have urged Obama to take more aggressive action in
Iraq, the prospect of strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria has drawn the ire
of some within the presidents own party.
I do not believe that our expanded military operations against [the
Islamic State] are covered under existing authorizations from Congress,
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement last month.
To clear things up, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., plans to introduce a bill when
Congress returns from its August recess that would authorize the
president to intervene in the region against the Islamic State.
Theres a legitimate question as to whether the president has the legal
authority to go into Syria, unless he determines that American lives are directly
threatened, Nelson told a group of local reporters in Florida this week.

Middle East Overview

2NC Overview
DA o/w and short circuits the case
1) Horizontal v. vertical escalation middle east war is
protracted by ISIS the tense situation and hostitility will
only get worse if ISIS is allowed to continue their turmoil
2) Timeframe any delay increases the risk of middle east
escalation
Immediate action on ISIS key congress is already mad at
Obamas inaction
Morissey 9/3 /14 (Ed, Bipartisan call in returning congress for Obama to take on ISIS, hotair.com,
September 3, 2014, http://hotair.com/archives/2014/09/03/bipartisan-call-in-returning-congress-for-obama-to-takeon-isis/)

After two beheadings of American journalists, the pressure on Barack

Obama to act has ramped up considerably. Congress returned to work this
week, and with it an effort to weigh in on the American response to ISIS
terrorism. Unlike a year ago, when Congress restrained Obama from attacking
Bashar al-Assad in part over concerns that it would boost terrorist groups like ISIS, a bipartisan
consensus has emerged that puts Congress ahead of the White House on
action in Iraq and Syria: Leading lawmakers in charge of foreign policy reacted
Tuesday to the reported beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff by increasing their calls for
more congressional involvement and oversight of President Obamas war
on ISIS. The latest apparent ISIS atrocity against an American citizen added to
the congressional anger at the Obama administration for what many
critics call an incomplete and unclear plan to confront the group both in Iraq and Syria,
following President Obamas admission last week that We dont have a
strategy yet for dealing with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The two leaders of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee said Tuesday that they want to lead the charge for more
congressional oversight by holding hearings and forcing a vote on
Obamas ISIS war within 60 days of the commencement of airstrikes in Iraq
last month. Still reeling from Obamas August 28 declaration that the
White House lacks a strategy for confronting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, top
lawmakers in both parties called on the president Tuesday to get one fast
and tell Congress and the American people what it is. The threat of ISIS is just
something that I believe very strongly that we cannot take lightly. We cannot dither, we cannot
just twiddle our thumbs, or wait and see. We have to act and we have to act soon,
Engel said. The more countries that we can get in this crusade to destroy terrorismthe better it will be. The
Hill also reports on the bipartisan consensus that more action and better
leadership are in order: Lawmakers from both parties on Tuesday exhorted President Obama to
broaden the military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after the group released a second
video that appeared to show the beheading of an American journalist. While the authenticity of the video has not
been confirmed, lawmakers said the presumed execution of 31-year-old Time journalist Steven Sotloff demands a

must go after ISIS right away because

the U.S. is the only one that can put together a coalition to stop this group
thats intent on barbaric cruelty, said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in a statement. Nelson announced he
would offer legislation next week that would give Obama clear authority to
forceful American response. Let there be no doubt, we

strike ISIS in Syria. This will ensure theres no question that the president
has the legal authority he needs, Nelson said.

Most likely scenario for extinction most nuclear toys

Fraser, former PM of Australia, 7/4/11
(Malcom, Dealing with nuclear terror means plants and weapons, Taipei Times)
Recent history is peppered with a litany of false alerts and near misses, each
unforeseen, each a combination of technical and human failure. The growing
potential for a nuclear disaster by cyber attack adds to the existential danger. We
now know that just 100 relatively small Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons, less than onethousandth of the global nuclear arsenal, could lift millions of tonnes of
dark smoke high into the atmosphere. There, it would abruptly cool and darken the
planet, slashing rainfall and food production in successive years and thus causing
worldwide starvation on a scale never before witnessed. This could result from the
arsenals of any of the 10 currently nuclear-armed states, with the exception of North Korea.

Intent, miscalculation, technical failure, cyber attack, or accident could cause the
nuclear escalation of a conflict between India and Pakistan, in the Middle East
(embroiling Israels nuclear weapons), or on the Korean Peninsula. Such outcomes are at least
as plausible or likely if not more so than a massive earthquake and tsunami causing widespread damage to
four Japanese nuclear reactors and their adjacent spent-fuel ponds.

Default to our impacts vertical escalation is more likely than

their nebulus great power war scenarios less internal links
to go through for the DA its procedural
Ephraim Kam, Deputy Head-Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 7 (A Nuclear Iran,
p. 50,
http://d.scribd.com/docs/2o4yoqqhx2btgchcpfug.pdf)http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/memo
randa/memo88.pdf
The statements by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about wiping
Israel off the map are not qualitatively new and resemble those by other
Iranian leaders. Their reiteration at a time when Iran is under pressure on
the nuclear issue, however, suggests increasing extremism on the part of
the Iranian leadership towards Israel, as well as diminished sensitivity
towards international public opinion. Even if it is unlikely, the possibility that
a fanatical group, whether within the regime or a faction emerging from a
split in the leadership, will gain control of nuclear weapons and decide to
use them against Israel cannot be categorically ruled out. Moreover, the
Middle East is a volatile region that has witnessed much violence and
military force. Ballistic missiles and chemical weapons have already been
used on a large scale, including in wars between Muslim countries. The
risk that nuclear weapons will be used in the Middle East is greater than in
other regions and is greater than the risk between the superpowers during the
Cold War. Rules of behavior and channels for dialogue capable of reducing
the risk do not yet exist.

Turns the case <EXPLAIN>

Diversionary war from another terrorist attack non-uniques
any war impact.

Impact Syria War

spillover uniquely causes escalation
Al-Saleh and White 13 [*Asaad Al-Saleh, Assistant Professor of Arabic, Comparative Literature and
Cultural Studies working for the Department of Languages and Literature and the Middle East Center at the
University of Utah. He is the author of several articles on issues related to identity, displacement, and political
culture in modern Arabic Literature, and **Loren White, Developmental Editor and independent research consultant.
He is a former Ethics lecturer at San Jose State University. Loren is a contributor to Huffington Post and has
published articles on Al-Jazeera English and Foreign Policys Middle East Channel. He received a Graduate
Certificate in International Affairs from Texas A&Ms Bush School of Public Governance, and a BA and MA in
Philosophy from San Jose State University, June, Dissecting an Evolving Conflict: The Syrian Uprising and the Future
of the Country,
http://smartstrategy.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/ISPU_Dissecting_an_Evolving_Conflict.pdf
]

with Russia potentially arming the regime with S-300 anti-aircraft

missiles, pressure is mounting on the U.S. government to intervene on behalf
of the rebels. While the E.U. has lifted its arms embargo on Syria, future U.S. policy remains
unknown. Like Israel, the U.S. wishes to avoid escalating the conflict into a regional
war at all costs, and is deeply concerned about the possibility of arms ending
up in the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, an openly al-Qaeda affiliated brigade.
Despite this, there are already signs pointing to the growing
internationalization of the conflict. Internally the rebels have succeeded in
wresting control of almost the entirety of the less populated countryside in the
north and east of the country, yet the regime remains in firm control of the critical
cities of Damascus, Hama, Homs, and much of Aleppo. Recently the rebels were able to
reopen the southern front and have been making large gains in Daraa
province and in the Damascus suburbs. However, the regime has recently taken
back, with the assistance of Hezbollah, much of the rebel held territory
around the Syria-Lebanon border and is conducting successful offensives
in the Homs and Hama provinces. At present a bloody stalemate exists with neither side capable of
defeating the other. The dangers posed from the continuation of the fighting are
not just limited to Syria. While the stalemate drags on, the risk of the violence in Syria
spilling over into neighboring countries is growing. Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey,
and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have all experienced shelling and/or
fighting. Perhaps no country is in greater danger than the fragile country of Lebanon,
Nevertheless,

which stands on the precipice of being pulled headfirst into the fighting. The most powerful force in the country,

Hezbollah, no longer hides that it is actively fighting for the regime inside
Syria.59 The FSA has responded by launching artillery strikes on Hezbollah
positions inside Lebanon,60 while fighting between Hezbollah and Syrian
rebels within Lebanese territory remains widespread. Furthermore, the regime
has shown a willingness to commit violent acts inside Lebanon. In February
2013, former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha was caught plotting to assassinate Lebanese religious

the
regime has bombed the Sunni Muslim town of Arsal in Eastern Lebanon. 62
figures and admitted that a senior Syrian intelligence official had given him the explosives.61 More recently

Protracted war causes state failure, Middle East instability,

state failure, and terrorism
Nasr 13 [Vali, Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, April 15, The
Dangerous Price of Ignoring Syria, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/opinion/global/the-dangerous-price-ofignoring-syria.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]

Obama has doggedly resisted American involvement in Syria. The

killing of over 70,000 people and the plight of over a million refugees have
elicited sympathy from the White House but not much more. That is because Syria
challenges a central aim of Obamas foreign policy: shrinking the U.S.
footprint in the Middle East and downplaying the regions importance to global politics. Doing
more on Syria would reverse the U.S. retreat from the region. Since the beginning
of Obamas first term, the administrations stance as events unfolded in the Middle East has
been wholly reactive. This lean back and wait approach has squandered
precious opportunity to influence the course of events in the Middle East. There has
President

been no strategy for capitalizing on the opportunity that the Arab Spring presented, or for containing its fallout
the Syrian crisis being the worst case to date. The president rewarded Burmese generals with a six-hour visit for
their willingness to embrace reform, but he has not visited a single Arab country that went through the Arab Spring.

Obama sees Syria as a tragic humanitarian crisis without obvious strategic

implications for the United States. How do I weigh tens of thousands whove been killed in Syria
versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo? he asked in a New Republic interview in

When the president visited the region last month he chose to focus on
the Arab-Israeli peace process rather than Syria. The peace process is now at the top of
Secretary of State John Kerrys agenda. The plight of Palestinians is a perennial concern, but it is in Syria
that the future of the region hangs in the balance. Choosing the peace process over
January.

Syria underscores not the administrations interest in the Middle East but its determination to look past it.

Washington has wasted precious time in using diplomatic, economic and

military levers to influence the course of events in Syria. That neglect has allowed the
conflagration to rage at great human cost, radicalizing the opposition and
putting at risk U.S. allies across the region. America cannot and should
not decide the fate of the Middle East, but it should be clear about its stakes there, and
not shy away from efforts to at least nudge events in more favorable
directions as this critical region faces momentous choices. A lean back and wait posture toward unfolding
events is dangerous. The paroxysm of violence in Syria is expected to kill tens of
thousands more and produce as many as three million refugees by the
years end. That is a humanitarian tragedy to be sure, but one with immediate
strategic consequences. American insouciance in the face of that devastation is
fomenting anti-Americanism. The waves of refugees will constitute an unstable
population that will be a breeding ground for extremism and in turn destabilize the
countries where they take refuge. Syrias neighbors are not equipped to deal with a humanitarian
disaster on this scale. The longer the devastation goes on the more difficult it will
be to put Syria back together, and failing to do so will leave a dangerous
morass in the heart of the Middle East, a failed state at war with itself where
extremism and instability will fester and all manner of terrorists and Al Qaeda
affiliates will find ample space, resources and recruits to menace the region and
world. Worse yet, the conflict in Syria could spill over its borders. Syria has become
ground zero in a broader conflict that pits Shiites against Sunnis and shapes the larger
regional competition for power between Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Syrias paroxysms if allowed to drag on could potentially spread far and wide and even change
the map of the region. America may think it does not have any interests in Syria,
but it has interests everywhere the Syrian conflict touches. Lebanon and Iraq
are each deeply divided along sectarian lines, and both countries teeter on a
knifes edge as tensions rise between their ascendant Shiite populations who fear a setback if
Bashar al-Assad falls, and the minority Sunnis in their own countries who support Syrias Sunni-led opposition.

Sectarian tensions stretch from Lebanon and Iraq through the Gulf

countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain and on to Pakistan where

sectarian violence has exploded into the open.

Terror Overview

1NC Terror (bio)

Large WMD terror attack is inevitable if ISIS still gets to chill in
Syria theyll use chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons.
Budowsky 8/20/14 (Brent, was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief
deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School
of Economics., Budowsky: ISIS poses nuclear 9/11 threat http://thehill.com/opinion/brent-budowsky/215603-brentbudowsky-isis-poses-9-11-scope-threat#ixzz3COVA4XmV)
After the latest grotesque atrocity by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the beheading of an American

policymakers must clearly understand the near

certainty that unless it is defeated and destroyed, ISIS will launch a major
terror attack on American or European soil. Analysts estimate that ISIS has
amassed a cash hoard of between $400 million and $2 billion. It is highly probable
that ISIS will attempt to use some of this money to obtain nuclear, chemical,
biological or other weapons of mass death on the international black
market or from corrupt officials in nations such as Russia, China, Pakistan
or North Korea to use in attacks against New York, Washington, London,
Paris, Berlin, Rome, Brussels or other nations it considers infidel enemies.
This danger is magnified by the fact that ISIS has recruited nationals of
the United States and Europe, who possess American and European
passports and are physically indistinguishable from local populations in
America and Europe. It is extraordinary that the mass murdering butchery
of ISIS is so demented than even al Qaeda is offended. It is alarming that the CIA,
which launched intelligence operations even against the United States Senate, and the NSA, which launched
journalist, American and European

massive and unprecedented eavesdropping operations, and intelligence services of leading European nations

were blind to the magnitude of the ISIS threat until the most barbaric terrorists in modern
history had taken over almost a third of Iraq and are on the brink of creating a terrorist super-state that dwarfs al
Qaedas efforts prior to 9/11. I vehemently opposed the misguided Iraq War from the moment it was proposed by
former President George W. Bush and have never been a neoconservative, warmonger or super-hawk. But

aggressive action against ISIS is urgently needed. ISIS has stated its
intention to attack the United States and Europe to advance its evil, messianic and
genocidal ideology and ambitions. ISIS has the money to purchase the most
deadly weapons in the world, and has recruited American and European traitors with above-average
capability to execute an attack. The odds that ISIS can obtain nuclear, chemical,
biological or other forms of mass destruction weapons are impossible to ascertain but
in a world of vast illegal arms trafficking, with so many corrupt officials in
nations possessing arsenals of destruction, the danger is real. The fact that
WMD scares prior to the Iraq War ranged from mistaken to deceitful does
not mean that the WMD danger does not exist today. It does. I applaud the recent
actions taken by President Obama. Obamas airstrikes saved tens of thousands of Yazidis
from genocide, took back the Mosul Dam from ISIS and saved countless Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians from slaughter.
The airstrikes inflicted material damage to ISIS. The diplomacy of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry
contributed mightily to the replacement of a disastrous Iraqi government by a government can unite Iraqi Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds. The Obama-Kerry initiatives will lead to the creation of a stable Afghan government and avoid the
collapse that was possible after the recent controversial Afghan elections. These are real successes. In the current
political climate, Obama seems to get credit for nothing, but he deserves great credit for some important successes

yet the danger of ISIS pulling off a nuclear, chemical,

biological or other mass death 9/11-style attack in a major American or
European city is real. Even with dirty or primitive WMD weapons, the casualty totals could
be catastrophic.
in recent weeks. And

Bioterror risks extinction

Sandberg & irkovi 8Research Fellow for the Future of Humanity Institute @ Oxford University
& senior research associate @ Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade [Anders Sandberg (PhD in computational
neuroscience from Stockholm University) & Milan M. irkovi (Professor of physics @ University of Novi Sad in
Serbia and Montenegro), How can we reduce the risk of human extinction? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist,
9/9/2008, http://tinyurl.com/p4gjozx]

The risks from anthropogenic hazards appear at present larger than those
from natural ones. Although great progress has been made in reducing the number of nuclear
weapons in the world, humanity is still threatened by the possibility of a global thermonuclear war
and a resulting nuclear winter. We may face even greater risks from emerging
technologies. Advances in synthetic biology might make it possible to engineer
pathogens capable of extinction-level pandemics. The knowledge, equipment,
and materials needed to engineer pathogens are more accessible than
those needed to build nuclear weapons. And unlike other weapons,
pathogens are self-replicating, allowing a small arsenal to become
exponentially destructive. Pathogens have been implicated in the
extinctions of many wild species. Although most pandemics "fade out" by
reducing the density of susceptible populations, pathogens with wide host ranges in
multiple species can reach even isolated individuals. The intentional or unintentional
release of engineered pathogens with high transmissibility, latency, and
lethality might be capable of causing human extinction. While such an event seems
unlikely today, the likelihood may increase as biotechnologies continue to
improve at a rate rivaling Moore's Law.

--- ISIS -> Bioterror

ISIS planning for major biological weapons attack- no concern
for human extinction
Doornbos and Moussa 8/28(2014. Harald- journalist located in Pakistan. studied
at the Academy of Journalism and two years of political science at the University of
Amsterdam. Jenan- reporter for Dubai based Al Aan TV. Found: The Islamic States Laptop of
Doom.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/28/found_the_islamic_state_terror_laptop_of_d
oom_bubonic_plague_weapons_of_mass_destruction_exclusive//GH)

the ISIS laptop

contains more than the typical propaganda and instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents
also suggest that the laptop's owner was teaching himself about the use
of biological weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would
have shocked the world. The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian
But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became clear that

national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in

Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that

education: The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how
to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague
from infected animals. "The advantage of biological weapons is that they
do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge, " the
document states. The document includes instructions for how to test the
weaponized disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. "When
the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should
start to appear within 24 hours," the document says. The laptop also includes a
26-page fatwa, or Islamic ruling, on the usage of weapons of mass
destruction. "If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different
way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction," states the fatwa by
Saudi jihadi cleric Nasir al-Fahd, who is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. " Even if it kills all of
them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth ." "The
Tunisia's northeast.

real difficulty in all of these weapons ... [is] to actually have a workable distribution system that will kill a lot of
people," said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish
National Defence College. "But

to produce quite scary weapons is certainly within

[the Islamic State's] capabilities." The Islamic State's sweeping gains in
recent months may have provided it with the capacity to develop such new
and dangerous weapons. Members of the jihadi group are not solely
fighting on the front lines these days -- they also control substantial parts
of Syria and Iraq. The fear now is that men like Muhammed could be quietly working behind the front lines
-- for instance, in the Islamic State-controlled University of Mosul or in some laboratory in the Syrian city of Raqqa,

the longer the

caliphate exists, the more likely it is that members with a science
background will come up with something horrible. The documents found
on the laptop of the Tunisian jihadist, meanwhile, leave no room for doubt
about the group's deadly ambitions. "Use small grenades with the virus,
and throw them in closed areas like metros, soccer stadiums, or
entertainment centers," the 19-page document on biological weapons
advises. "Best to do it next to the air-conditioning. It also can be used
during suicide operations."
the group's de facto capital -- to develop chemical or biological weapons. In short,

2NC Overview
Bioweapons outweigh
Magnitudeself-replicating pathogens are easy to build and
have been implicated in past extinctions. Pathogens with wide
host ranges, latency, and lethality can be engineered for
human extinctionthats Sandberg. Bioweapons cause
extinctionnuclear weapons dont.
Singer 1Clifford Singer, Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament,
and International Security at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign [Spring
2001, Will Mankind Survive the Millennium? The Bulletin of the Program in Arms
Control, Disarmament, and International Security, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 13.1, http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/research/S&Ps/2001Sp/S&P_XIII/Singer.htm]
In recent years the fear of the apocalypse (or religious hope for it) has been in part a child of the Cold War, but its
seeds in Western culture go back to the Black Death and earlier. Recent polls suggest that the majority in the United
States that believe man would survive into the future for substantially less than a millennium was about 10 percent

fear of annihilation of the human species

through nuclear warfare was confused with the admittedly terrifying, but
much different matter of destruction of a dominant civilization. The
destruction of a third or more of much of the globes population through the
disruption from the direct consequences of nuclear blast and fire damage was certainly possible. There
was, and still is, what is now known to be a rather small chance that dust raised by an all-out
nuclear war would cause a socalled nuclear winter, substantially reducing
agricultural yields especially in temperate regions for a year or more. As noted above mankind as a
higher in the Cold War than afterward. However

whole has weathered a number of mind-boggling disasters in the past fifty thousand years even if older cultures or

Moreover the fear that

radioactive fallout would make the globe uninhabitable, publicized by widely seen
works such as On the Beach, was a metaphor for the horror of nuclear war rather than reality.
The epidemiological lethal results of well over a hundred atmospheric
nuclear tests are barely statistically detectable except in immediate
fallout plumes. The increase in radiation exposure far from the
combatants in even a full scale nuclear exchange at the height of the Cold
War would have been modest compared to the variations in natural
background radiation doses that have readily been adapted to by a number of human populations.
Nor is there any reason to believe that global warming or other insults to
our physical environment resulting from currently used technologies will
challenge the survival of mankind as a whole beyond what it has already handily survived
civilizations have sometimes eventually given way to new ones in the process.

through the past fifty thousand years.

There are, however, two technologies currently under development that may pose a
more serious threat to human survival. The first and most immediate is
biological warfare combined with genetic engineering. Smallpox is the
most fearsome of natural biological warfare agents in existence. By the end of
the next decade, global immunity to smallpox will likely be at a low
unprecedented since the emergence of this disease in the distant past,

while the opportunity for it to spread rapidly across the globe will be at an
all time high. In the absence of other complications such as nuclear war
near the peak of an epidemic, developed countries may respond with
quarantine and vaccination to limit the damage. Otherwise mortality there may match
the rate of 30 percent or more expected in unprepared developing countries. With respect to genetic
engineering using currently available knowledge and technology, the simple expedient of
spreading an ample mixture of coat protein variants could render a
vaccination response largely ineffective, but this would otherwise not be expected to substantially
increase overall mortality rates. With development of new biological technology, however,
there is a possibility that a variety of infectious agents may be engineered
for combinations of greater than natural virulence and mortality, rather than
just to overwhelm currently available antibiotics or vaccines. There is no a priori known upper
limit to the power of this type of technology base, and thus the survival of a
globally connected human family may be in question when and if this is 1achieved.

Probabilitymaterials for bioweapons are more accessible

than those for nukesthats Sandberg.

AT: Impact D (General)

Bio-engineering makes bioweapons deadlier, more virulent,
and easier to buildempirics are irrelevant
Anders SANDBERG, Research Fellow at University of Oxford, PhD in
computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, 5/29/14 [May 29, 2014,
The five biggest threats to human existence, The Conversation,
http://theconversation.com/the-five-biggest-threats-to-human-existence-27053]

Natural pandemics have killed more people than wars. However, natural
pandemics are unlikely to be existential threats : there are usually some people resistant
to the pathogen, and the offspring of survivors would be more resistant. Evolution also does not favor parasites that
wipe out their hosts, which is why syphilis went from a virulent killer to a chronic disease as it spread in Europe.

Unfortunately we can now make diseases nastier. One of the more famous examples
is how the introduction of an extra gene in mousepox the mouse version of smallpox
made it far more lethal and able to infect vaccinated individuals. Recent
work on bird flu has demonstrated that the contagiousness of a disease can
be deliberately boosted.
But as biotechnology
gets better and cheaper, more groups will be able to make diseases worse .
Right now the risk of somebody deliberately releasing something devastating is low.

Most work on bioweapons have been done by governments looking for

something controllable, because wiping out humanity is not militarily useful. But there are
always some people who might want to do things because they can.
Others have higher purposes. For instance, the Aum Shinrikyo cult tried to hasten
the apocalypse using bioweapons beside their more successful nerve gas attack. Some
people think the Earth would be better off without humans , and so on.
The number of fatalities from bioweapon and epidemic outbreaks attacks
looks like it has a power-law distribution most attacks have few victims,
but a few kill many. Given current numbers the risk of a global pandemic from bioterrorism seems very
small. But this is just bioterrorism: governments have killed far more people than terrorists with bioweapons (up to

as technology gets more

powerful in the future nastier pathogens become easier to design .
400,000 may have died from the WWII Japanese biowar program). And

AT: No Bioweapons
Yes bioweapons
Advances in synthetic biology make it much easier to engineer pathogens capable
of extinction. The knowledge and material is highly accessiblethats Sandberg.

Bioweapons are easy to reproduce and transport

Washington Times 8 [Worse than nuclear threat
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/10/worse-than-nuclear-threat/]
biological weapons might be the easiest to reproduce safely in
a lab, assuming one knows what to do. A biological agent, as a weapon of mass destruction or a terror
weapon, is the least expensive as well as the easiest to disseminate. A
biological agent does not need a delivery mechanism and can be
transported by one person. It can pass undetected through customs and
border guards, given that it is odorless and colorless.
Of the three sorts,

All that is needed to spread an epidemic of botulism, for example, or mad cow disease is to hang around a truck
stop for a few hours until a semi pulling a load of cattle on its way to market drives in. Wait until the driver leaves
his load unattended, then shortage scrub a previously infected rag around the railings and the mouths of a few of
the cattle, and let nature do the rest. The disadvantage, for the terrorist, is that the person carrying the rag is likely
to become infected. However, with no of jihadists queuing up to become martyrs, finding two or three volunteers
willing to die a horrible, slow and excruciatingly painful death should be no problem.

biological agents remain the cheapest and,

in all probability, the most likely agents of mass destruction to become available to terrorist
From a financial and cost-effective perspective,
groups.
In their haste to leave training camps and bases of operation in Afghanistan in the wake of rapidly advancing U.S.
forces, al Qaeda agents left behind piles of documents, including videotapes showing tests and the effects of
chemical agents on animals.
Chemical weapons are more cumbersome to produce, require larger amounts to cause enough damage to leave a
psychological scar and require a delivery mechanism such as an artillery shell.

A biological agent can cause far more deaths than a nuclear weapon,
because it is not limited geographically, unlike a nuclear bomb. For
example, an infected truck driver in Omaha, Neb., infects an Army
sergeant he meets in a diner outside Tulsa, Okla.
The sergeant travels by plane to New York, where he changes planes, boarding one bound for Frankfurt, Germany.
Again, he changes planes, this time flying to Kuwait, where he joins up with several members of his unit heading
into Iraq. Along the way, the sergeant has infected scores of people at every airport between Omaha and Baghdad.
Those people in turn would have traveled on to Australia, South America, Canada, European cities and other parts

Within a few days, people from Sydney, Australia, to Seattle could

start dying.
of the world.

A nuclear device, on the other hand, would devastate the immediate area and,
depending on its size, contaminate everything in a radius of several miles, but the
damage would be confined to the immediate area of detonation, plus the fallout

zone. In addition, depending on the wind direction and speed, radioactive particles could be carried hundreds, if not
thousands, of miles. But the image of a nuclear blast carries greater impact psychologically.

AT: Terrorists Wont Use

Terrorists have motive to use bioweapons (also turns the
economy)
Kellman 8Professor of Law, Director, International Weapons Control Center,
International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University [May 2008, Barry
Kellman, Bioviolence: A Growing Threat, Futurist,
http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/31535413/Bioviolence-AGrowing-Threat]
According to the National Academies of Science, The threat spectrum is
broad and evolvingin some ways predictably, in other ways
unexpectedly. In the future, genetic engineering and other technologies
may lead to the development of pathogenic organisms with unique,
unpredictable characteristics. For as far into the future as we can possibly see, every
passing day it becomes slightly easier to commit a violent catastrophe
than it was the day before. Indeed, the rapid pace of advancing science helps
explain why policies to prevent such a catastrophe are so complicated.
Bioviolence Jihad? Some experts argue that terrorists and fanatics are not
interested in bioviolence and that the danger might therefore be overblown. Since there have been no
catastrophic bio-violence attacks, these experts argue, terrorists lack the intention to make bioweapons.

Hopefully, they are correct. But an enormous amount of evidence suggests

they are wrong. From the dawn of biologys ability to isolate pathogens,
people have pursued hostile applications of biological agents. It is perilous
to ignore this extensive history by presuming that todays villains are not
fervent about weaponizing disease. Not a single state admits to having a
bioweapons program, but U.S. intelligence officials assert that as many as
10 states might have active programs, including North Korea, Iran, and
Syria. Moreover, many terrorist organizations have expressed interest in
acquiring biological weapons. Whatever weight the taboo against inflicting
disease might have for nation-states, it is obviously irrelevant to
terrorists, criminals, and lunatics. Deterrence by threat of retaliation is
essentially meaningless for groups with suicidal inclinations who are likely
to intermingle with innocent civilians. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamic fundamentalist
organizations have abling them to spread in regions where there is no natural immunity. The polio virus has
been synthesized from scratch; its creators called it an animate chemical. Soon, it may be
resynthesized into a form that is contagious even among vaccinated
populations . Recreation of longer adicated livestock diseases could
ravage herds severely lacking in genetic diversity, damage food supplies,
and cause devastating economic losses. Perhaps the greatest bio-threat is
the manipulation of the flu and other highly contagious viruses, such as
Ebola. Today, scientists can change parts of a viruss genetic material so that
it can perform specific functions. The genomic sequence of the Spanish flu
virus that killed upwards of 40 million people nearly a century ago has been widely published; any
savvy scientist could reconstruct it. The avian flu is even more lethal, albeit
not readily contagious via casual aerosol delivery. A malevolent bio-scientist might augment its contagiousness.

The Ebola virus might be manipulated so that it kills more slowly, allowing
it to be spread farther before its debilitating effects altogether consume its carrier. A bit further off is
genetic manipulation of the measles virusone of the great killers in human historyrendering useless the

laboratory re-synthesis of
smallpox may be possible. Advanced drug delivery systems can be used to
disseminate lethal agents to broad populations. Bio-regulatorssmall organic
immunizations that most of us receive in early childhood. Soon,

compounds that modify body systems could enhance targeted delivery technologies. Some experts are concerned
that new weapons could be aimed at the immune, neurological, and neuroendocrine systems. Nanotechnology that
lends itself to mechanisms for advanced disease detection and drug deliverysuch as gold nanotubes that can
administer drugs directly into a tumorcould also deliver weaponized agents deep into the body, substantially
raising the weapons effectiveness. Altogether, techniques that were on the frontiers of science only a decade or
two ago are rapidly mutating. A looming danger confronts the worldthe threat of bioviolence. It is a danger that
will only grow in the future, yet we are increasingly failing to confront it. With every passing day, committing a biocatastrophe becomes a bit easier, and this condition will perpetuate for as long as science progresses. Biological
warfare is as old as conflict, of course, but in terms of the objectives of traditional warfare gaining territory or
resources, compelling the surrender of an opposing armybiological weapons werent very effective. If the
objective is to inflict mass death and panic on a mixed population, however, emerging bioweapons offer remarkable
potential. We would be irresponsible to presume that radical jihadists like al Qaeda have ignored said potential.

1NC Terror (Nuke)

Large WMD terror attack is inevitable if ISIS still gets to chill in
Syria theyll use chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons.
Budowsky 8/20/14 (Brent, was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief
deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School
of Economics., Budowsky: ISIS poses nuclear 9/11 threat http://thehill.com/opinion/brent-budowsky/215603-brentbudowsky-isis-poses-9-11-scope-threat#ixzz3COVA4XmV)
After the latest grotesque atrocity by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the beheading of an American

policymakers must clearly understand the near

certainty that unless it is defeated and destroyed, ISIS will launch a major
terror attack on American or European soil. Analysts estimate that ISIS has
amassed a cash hoard of between $400 million and $2 billion. It is highly probable
that ISIS will attempt to use some of this money to obtain nuclear, chemical,
biological or other weapons of mass death on the international black
market or from corrupt officials in nations such as Russia, China, Pakistan
or North Korea to use in attacks against New York, Washington, London,
Paris, Berlin, Rome, Brussels or other nations it considers infidel enemies.
This danger is magnified by the fact that ISIS has recruited nationals of
the United States and Europe, who possess American and European
passports and are physically indistinguishable from local populations in
America and Europe. It is extraordinary that the mass murdering butchery
of ISIS is so demented than even al Qaeda is offended. It is alarming that the CIA,
which launched intelligence operations even against the United States Senate, and the NSA, which launched
journalist, American and European

massive and unprecedented eavesdropping operations, and intelligence services of leading European nations

were blind to the magnitude of the ISIS threat until the most barbaric terrorists in modern
history had taken over almost a third of Iraq and are on the brink of creating a terrorist super-state that dwarfs al
Qaedas efforts prior to 9/11. I vehemently opposed the misguided Iraq War from the moment it was proposed by
former President George W. Bush and have never been a neoconservative, warmonger or super-hawk. But

aggressive action against ISIS is urgently needed. ISIS has stated its
intention to attack the United States and Europe to advance its evil, messianic and
genocidal ideology and ambitions. ISIS has the money to purchase the most
deadly weapons in the world, and has recruited American and European traitors with above-average
capability to execute an attack. The odds that ISIS can obtain nuclear, chemical,
biological or other forms of mass destruction weapons are impossible to ascertain but
in a world of vast illegal arms trafficking, with so many corrupt officials in
nations possessing arsenals of destruction, the danger is real. The fact that
WMD scares prior to the Iraq War ranged from mistaken to deceitful does
not mean that the WMD danger does not exist today. It does. I applaud the recent
actions taken by President Obama. Obamas airstrikes saved tens of thousands of Yazidis
from genocide, took back the Mosul Dam from ISIS and saved countless Iraqis, Kurds and Syrians from slaughter.
The airstrikes inflicted material damage to ISIS. The diplomacy of Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry
contributed mightily to the replacement of a disastrous Iraqi government by a government can unite Iraqi Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds. The Obama-Kerry initiatives will lead to the creation of a stable Afghan government and avoid the
collapse that was possible after the recent controversial Afghan elections. These are real successes. In the current
political climate, Obama seems to get credit for nothing, but he deserves great credit for some important successes

yet the danger of ISIS pulling off a nuclear, chemical,

biological or other mass death 9/11-style attack in a major American or
European city is real. Even with dirty or primitive WMD weapons, the casualty totals could
be catastrophic.
in recent weeks. And

Nuclear terrorism causes extinction

Hellman 8 (Martin E. Hellman, emeritus prof of engineering @ Stanford, Risk
Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence SPRING 2008 THE BENT OF TAU BETA PI,
http://www.nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf)

The threat of nuclear terrorism looms much larger in the publics mind than the threat of a fullscale nuclear war, yet this article focuses primarily on the latter. An explanation is therefore in order before

A terrorist attack involving a nuclear weapon would be a

catastrophe of immense proportions: A 10-kiloton bomb detonated at Grand Central Station on
proceeding.

a typical work day would likely kill some half a million people, and inflict over a trillion dollars in direct economic

The likelihood
of such an attack is also significant. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has
estimated the chance of a nuclear terrorist incident within the next decade to be
roughly 50 percent [Bunn 2007, page 15]. David Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, estimates
damage. America and its way of life would be changed forever. [Bunn 2003, pages viii-ix].

those odds at less than one percent, but notes, We would never accept a situation where the chance of a major
nuclear accident like Chernobyl would be anywhere near 1% .... A nuclear terrorism attack is a low-probability

In a
survey of 85 national security experts, Senator Richard Lugar found a median
estimate of 20 percent for the probability of an attack involving a nuclear explosion
occurring somewhere in the world in the next 10 years, with 79 percent
of the respondents believing it more likely to be carried out by
terrorists than by a government [Lugar 2005, pp. 14-15]. I support increased efforts to reduce
event, but we cant live in a world where its anything but extremely low-probability. [Hegland 2005].

the threat of nuclear terrorism, but that is not inconsistent with the approach of this article. Because

terrorism is one of the potential trigger mechanisms for a full-scale nuclear war,
the risk analyses proposed herein will include estimating the risk of nuclear terrorism as one component of the
overall risk. If that risk, the overall risk, or both are found to be unacceptable, then the proposed remedies would
be directed to reduce which- ever risk(s) warrant attention. Similar remarks apply to a number of other threats
(e.g., nuclear war between the U.S. and China over Taiwan). his article would be incomplete if it only dealt with
the threat of nuclear terrorism and neglected the threat of full- scale nuclear war. If both risks are unacceptable,

societys
almost total neglect of the threat of full-scale nuclear war makes studying
that risk all the more important. The cosT of World War iii The danger associated with nuclear
an effort to reduce only the terrorist component would leave humanity in great peril. In fact,

deterrence depends on both the cost of a failure and the failure rate.3 This section explores the cost of a failure of
nuclear deterrence, and the next section is concerned with the failure rate. While other definitions are possible,
this article defines a failure of deterrence to mean a full-scale exchange of all nuclear weapons available to the
U.S. and Russia, an event that will be termed World War III. Approximately 20 million people died as a result of the
first World War. World War IIs fatalities were double or triple that numberchaos prevented a more precise determination. In both cases humanity recovered, and the world today bears few scars that attest to the horror of those
two wars. Many people therefore implicitly believe that a third World War would be horrible but survivable, an
extrapola- tion of the effects of the first two global wars. In that view, World War III, while horrible, is something
that humanity may just have to face and from which it will then have to recover. In contrast, some of those most
qualified to assess the situation hold a very different view. In a 1961 speech to a joint session of the Philippine
Con- gress, General Douglas MacArthur, stated, Global war has become a Frankenstein to destroy both sides. If

No longer does it possess even

the chance of the winner of a duel. It contains now only the germs of
double suicide. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ex- pressed a similar view: If deterrence
fails and conflict develops, the present U.S. and NATO strategy carries with it a high risk that Western
civilization will be destroyed [McNamara 1986, page 6]. More recently, George Shultz, William
you lose, you are annihilated. If you win, you stand only to lose.

Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn4 echoed those concerns when they quoted President Reagans belief that
nuclear weapons were totally irrational, totally inhu- mane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life

on earth and civilization. [Shultz 2007] Official studies, while couched in less emotional terms, still convey the
horrendous toll that World War III would exact: The

resulting deaths would be far beyond

any precedent. Executive branch calculations show a range of U.S. deaths from 35 to 77 percent (i.e., 79160 million dead) a change in targeting could kill somewhere between 20 million and 30 million additional
people on each side .... These calculations reflect only deaths during the first 30 days. Additional millions would
be injured, and many would eventually die from lack of adequate medical care millions of people might starve
or freeze during the follow- ing winter, but it is not possible to estimate how many. further millions might
eventually die of latent radiation effects. [OTA 1979, page 8] This OTA report also noted the possibility of serious
ecological damage [OTA 1979, page 9], a concern that as- sumed a new potentiality when the TTAPS report [TTAPS

nuclear explosions and their

resultant fire- storms could usher in a nuclear winter that might erase homo
sapiens from the face of the earth, much as many scientists now believe the K-T Extinction that
1983] proposed that the ash and dust from so many nearly simultaneous

wiped out the dinosaurs resulted from an impact winter caused by ash and dust from a large asteroid or comet
striking Earth. The TTAPS report produced a heated debate, and there is still no scientific consensus on whether a

even
a limited nuclear exchange or one between newer nuclear-weapon states, such as India and
Pakistan, could have devastating long-lasting climatic consequences due to the
nuclear winter would follow a full-scale nuclear war. Recent work [Robock 2007, Toon 2007] suggests that

large volumes of smoke that would be generated by fires in modern megacities. While it is uncertain how
destructive World War III would be, prudence dictates that we apply the same engi- neering conservatism that
saved the Golden Gate Bridge from collapsing on its 50th anniversary and assume that

War III is a necessitynot an option.

preventing World

2NC Overview
And the threat of nuclear terror is realthey have access to
the tech now and are willing to use it because of ideological
motivesthats Beres and Dvorkin.
Nuclear use is an existential threatthats Toon. It would
produce over a million urban casualties and would result in an
immense amount of global, climate perturbations.
Terrorism causes extinction---hard-line responses are key
Nathan Myhrvold '13, Phd in theoretical and mathematical physics from
Princeton, and founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and
chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation , July 2013, "Stratgic Terrorism: A
Call to Action," The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2,
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-TerrorismMyhrvold-7-3-2013.pdf

powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the
world works. Technology now allows stateless groups to organize, recruit,
and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the
extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that
stateless groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage.
They may act on their own, or they may act as proxies for nation-states that
wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces to be reckoned with. At the same
time, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can
obtain incredibly lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a small group can
be as lethal as the largest superpower. Such a group could execute an attack that could kill
millions of people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill billions of people,
to end modern civilizationperhaps even to drive the human race to extinction. Our defense
Several

establishment was shaped over decades to address what was, for a long time, the only strategic threat our nation
faced: Soviet or Chinese missiles. More recently, it has started retooling to address tactical terror attacks like those

A real defense
will require rebuilding our military and intelligence capabilities from the ground
up. Yet, so far, strategic terrorism has received relatively little attention in
defense agencies, and the efforts that have been launched to combat this
existential threat seem fragmented. History suggests what will happen.
The only thing that shakes America out of complacency is a direct threat
from a determined adversary that confronts us with our shortcomings by
repeatedly attacking us or hectoring us for decades.
launched on the morning of 9/11, but the reform process is incomplete and inconsistent.

Nuclear terrorism causes nuclear war.

Ayson 10 (Robert, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic
Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, After a Terrorist Nuclear
Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July,
Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)

But these two nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare

an act of
nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange
of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and
not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and especially

tomorrows terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state
possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the
superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns
grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to
depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state
nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered
just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be
fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too
responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as
well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if
it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian
stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that
nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May
et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a wide area in tiny fragments,
its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from
its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important some indication of where the
nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and
American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all)

would shift

suspicion

to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United
authorities in Washington would be left
with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program
continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely
immediately

Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well,

ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a
backdrop of existing tension in Washingtons relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had
already been traded between these major powers, would

officials and political leaders not be tempted to

assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United
States was already involved in some sort of limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were
confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present
time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of
heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures
that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack?

Washingtons early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil

might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation
with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath of
the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be expected to place the countrys armed forces, including its

In such a tense environment, when careful

planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible that
Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions
to use force (and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the
temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted that any
preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response.
nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert.

Future terror attacks cause XTC- increasing tech and lack of

effective US response
Myhrvold 13Nathan Myhrvold, PhD in theoretical and mathematical physics
from Princeton, and founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist
and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation [July 2013, Strategic
Terrorism: A Call to Action, The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2,
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-TerrorismMyhrvold-7-3-2013.pdf]

Technology contains no inherent moral directiveit empowers people, whatever their intent, good or evil. This fact,
of course, has always been true: when bronze implements supplanted those made of stone, the ancient world got
swords and battle-axes as well as scythes and awls. Every technology has violent applications because that is one

modern
technology can provide small groups of people with much greater lethality
than ever before. We now have to worry that private parties might gain
access to weapons that are as destructive asor possibly even more
destructive thanthose held by any nation-state. A handful of people,
perhaps even a single individual, now have the ability to kill millions or even billions. Indeed, it is
perfectly feasible, from a technological standpoint, to kill every man,
woman, and child on earth. The gravity of the situation is so extreme that
getting the concept across without seeming silly or alarmist is challenging .
of the first things we humans ask of our tools. The novelty of our present situation is that

Just thinking about the subject with any degree of seriousness numbs the mind. Worries about the future of the
human race are hardly novel. Indeed, the notion that terrorists or others might use weapons of mass destruction is
so commonplace as to be almost pass. Spy novels, movies, and television dramas explore this plot frequently. We
have become desensitized to this entire genre, in part because James Bond always manages to save the world in
the end. Reality may be different. In my estimation ,

the U.S. government, although well-meaning, is

unable to protect us from the greatest threats we face. The other nations
of the world are also utterly unprepared. Even obvious and simple steps are not being taken.
The gap between what is necessary and what is being contemplated, much less being done, is staggering. My
appraisal of the present situation does not discount the enormous efforts of many brave men and women in law
enforcement, intelligence services, and the military. These people are doing what they can, but the resources that
we commit to defense and the gathering of intelligence are mostly squandered on problems that are far less
dangerous to the American public than the ones we are ignoring. Addressing the issue in a meaningful way will

our political
leaders have had neither the vision to see the enormity of the problem nor
the will to combat it. These weaknesses are not surprising: bureaucracies change only under extreme
ultimately require large structural changes in many parts of the government. So far, however,

duress. And despite what some may say, the shocking attacks of September 11th, 2001, have not served as a
wake-up call to get serious.

Given the meager response to that assault, every

reason exists to believe that sometime in the next few decades America
will be attacked on a scale that will make 9/11 look trivial by comparison.

ISIS -> Terror

ISIS leads to terrorist attacks on US soil- new 9/11 type attacks
coming
Grinberg 8/31(2014.David B- an independent Washington, D.C.-based writer who has worked
in the Clinton White House and the Office of the House Majority Leader of Congress, in addition to
global political consulting firms and the news media. Time to Quell the Isis Crisis.
http://politix.topix.com/news/13943-time-to-quell-the-isis-crisis//GH)
One of the only top administration officials to clearly lay out the full extent of the ISIS threat has been the bluntly

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. He recently remarked that ISIS is: Beyond
anything that we've seen...As sophisticated and well-funded as any
[terrorist] group that we've seen." And "They're beyond just a terrorist
group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of strategic and tactical
military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded." In fact, many counterterrorism experts have reportedly said that ISIS dwarfs al Qaeda in terms of military
might, money and recruiting power, as Secretary Hagel pointed out. Moreover, ISIS is
attracting Westerners who are radicalized by the terrorist group's
extremist ideology and grand plan to conquer the Middle East and the
world via a so-called caliphate. U.S. and British citizens recruited by ISIS have
international passports to travel to America and other Western countries
undetected. This may result in egregious mass terrorist attacks on our
homeland through the use of chemical or biological weapons, a crude
nuclear device, or so-called dirty bombs, among other weapons of mass
destruction. It's bad enough that ISIS wasn't contained and eliminated at the outset when Syria was engulfed
by civil war. However, the ISIS threat will certainly grow worse if America
sheepishly stands on the sidelines in Syria. Do Americans want to wait for
decisive U.S. military action against ISIS until another 9/11-style mass
terrorist attack hits the homeland like a sucker punch to the gut?
spoken

ISIS terror threats US Soil- dirty bombs and poison potential

methods
Freidenrich 9/2(2014. Denny- author from Languana Beach, CA. Graduate of Univ. of So. Cal.
Worked on Capitol Hill in '72. ISIS could hit political, entertainment hubs in US.
http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/216458-isis-could-hit-political-entertainment-hubs-in-us//GH)
I agree with Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, that the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria must be eliminated before the jihadist militia attacks America ( ISIS

is one plane ticket

away from U.S. shores, Aug. 24). The 9/11 terrorists who flew jet planes into the World Trade Center
twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon wanted to strike at the heart of Americas financial and military

the next attack quite possibly could be carried out

on our nations political or entertainment capitals the first during a
State of the Union address when the president, members of Congress and
Supreme Court justices are under one roof on Capitol Hill, perhaps, and the second
greatness. With this thought in mind,

in Hollywood or Disneyland where, from ISISs perspective, U.S. hedonism infects Mideast fundamentalism daily.

Dirty bombs probably would be the ISIS weapon of choice in either case.
However, there is another scenario to consider. What if the Colorado River is
poisoned? It carries water across seven states to 40 million people daily . If
ISIS could pull that off, it would be an international, geopolitical game-

changer. Imagine the panic that would set in if just 5 percent 2 million
of the people in California, where I live, all of a sudden became violently ill
or worse? Local physicians, hospitals and morgues would be quickly
overwhelmed by the sick and the dead. Homeland Security, along with the CIA, NSA, FBI and local law
enforcement agencies, all do a terrific job protecting us daily from such calamities. That said , no one
person or security plan is perfect. ISIS not only knows this, it is planning
on it. Any breach of American sovereignty by ISIS would be viewed as a
victory in their eyes. We cannot allow this to happen. Lets stop whispering in the shadows about a
possible attack. Rogers is correct when he says its time to confront this potential crisis now.

ISIS created the worlds largest terrorist safe haven its the
largest risk of nuclear terrorism
Bunn 7/11/14 (Matthew Bunn, a professor of practice at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, is a former adviser on nonproliferation in the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy, where he focused on control of nuclear weapons and materials, Matthew, ISIS Seizes Nuclear
Materialbut Thats Not the Reason to Worry 7/11, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/isis-seizes-nuclear-material
%E2%80%94-that%E2%80%99s-not-the-reason-worry-10849)
But while this particular uranium is not much of a worry, the larger picture is starting to make me bite my nails a

The Islamic State now controls a big chunk of territory, hundreds of

millions of dollars, and thousands of armed troops and it has made clear
that its ambitions are global. Its statement declaring itself the caliphate
promised by Allah was an explicit invitation to violent Islamic extremists from all
over the world to join them. Like the Talibans Afghanistan before 9/11, the Islamic State
may become a safe haven for people from other groups and countries to train and plot complex
attacks. Having such a haven where the government is not going to interfere
makes a huge difference in terrorists ability to put together a really complicated
plot from something like 9/11 to a plot to make a nuclear bomb. Lets not forget that al Qaeda has
repeatedly sought to get the kind of nuclear material that really could be
put together into a nuclear bomb, and the expertise to do that job . The
Islamic State or others taking advantage of its territory may well renew
that effort. Thats all the more reason to accelerate the effort to ensure that all the worlds potential nuclear
bit.

bomb material is effectively secured and to be grateful that past efforts eliminated such material from Iraq long
before the Islamic State came on the scene.

ISIS will become the staging ground for new global terrorist
attacks
OMalley 9/6/14 (Nick, The Age, Obama struggles to hold the centre in maelstrom factiva) ISIL =
Islamic State in the Levant (alternate name for ISIS)

Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism

Center, addressed a packed room at the Brookings Institution. The agency he leads is a little-known but critical
On Thursday morning Matt

cog in the US national security machine. Simply put, its job is to assess the seriousness of specific terrorist threats
and terrorist groups. When the President meets with homeland security advisers, it is Olsen's job to open the

described a large and powerful

terrorist group that now controlled territory about the size of Britain in
the heart of the Middle East, boasted 10,000 fighters and operated the
most sophisticated propaganda machine of any terrorist group on Earth. He
said ISIL had proved to be an effective fighting force, its battlefield strategy
meeting by describing the threat to be discussed. Olsen

"complex and adaptive, employing a mix of terrorist operations, hit-andrun tactics, and paramilitary assaults to enable the group's rapid gains ". It
viewed itself as the new leader of the global jihad and had a strategic goal
of establishing a caliphate through armed conflict with governments it
considered to be apostate, including those of Syria, Iraq and the United
States. Olsen noted that in January its leader "warned that the US will soon 'be in
direct conflict' with the group, and there's little doubt that ISIL views the
US as a strategic enemy". He said that ISIL's territorial control gave it safe
havens from which it could plan and prepare for attacks on its enemies .

ISIS risks global terrorism

Boot 7/29/14 (Max, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

A Strategy for Defeating ISIS in

Syria and Iraq Congressional Testimony, http://i.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Max%20Boot%20HASC
%20Testimony%20July%2029%202014.pdf)
Even if ISIS is too busy fighting Iraqi Security Forces at the momentsomething that it is doing with disturbing

there is little doubt that its continuing control

of so much territory greatly heightens the risk of international terrorism.
Every time Salafist extremists have managed to consolidate control of
territory, whether in Mali or Afghanistan, they have turned their state into
a magnet for international jihadists who flock there to be trained and
successto focus on plots against the US,

indoctrined. Some, it is true, never leavethey become martyrs while fighting against local enemies. But some
small portion travels abroad in the hope of attacking targets in proWestern countries or in the West itself.

Western intelligence officials estimate that some 10,000 foreign fighters

have joined the battle against Bashar Assad and that 3,000 may hold
European or other Western passports, including at least 100 Americans. And those figures are
growing. Attorney General Eric Holder recently said that intelligence about plots involving terrorists based in Syria
were something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern. In some ways, it's more frightening than anything I
think I've seen as attorney general.

--- Has Nuclear Material

Isis has nuclear material
Mitchell & McClam 6/10/14 (Andrea Mitchell and Erin McClam of NBC News contributed to this
report. NBC News,., Nuclear Experts Play Down Threat of Uranium Stolen by ISIS,
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/iraq-turmoil/nuclear-experts-play-down-threat-uranium-stolen-isis-n152926)

nuclear material
that Iraq says was stolen from a university by the insurgent group known as ISIS. The Iraqi
ambassador to the U.N., in a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier this week, said that ISIS
had gotten its hands on 88 pounds of uranium compounds from Mosul University. Iraq
said the material had been intended for scientific research. The letter, obtained by Reuters, appealed for
help to stave off the threat of their use by terrorists in Iraq or abroad.
The United Nations and outside experts cast doubt Thursday on the danger posed by

2NC Impacts

Impact Pakistan Instability / Nuclear War

ISIS will take over a weak Pakistani state causes nuclear
escalation
Maloof 8/24/14 (Michael, ISIS ABOUT TO BECOME A NUCLEAR POWER?
http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/08/isis-gains-support-of-fierce-leader/#8pwHAH08gBHtUsw5.99)
The jihadist army of the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, had taken over large swaths of Iraq and declared
the establishment of a caliphate, governed by Islamic law, or Shariah, that also includes northeastern Syria.

Azizs backing of Baghdadi is seen as ominous by Western intelligence , since

he is close to such groups as Sipa-e-Sahaba and the Tehnik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, which seek
the overthrow even by violent means of the Pakistani government, which
possesses nuclear weapons. Azizs support for Baghdadi and ISIS comes as
Pakistan, a predominantly Sunni country, faces yet another political crisis that
threatens the existence of its democratic secular government . Political opponents
of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have demanded his resignation, which he has refused. His opponents want
sweeping constitutional reform to replace parliamentary democracy and confront alleged corruption that has crept

jihadist groups see an opportunity now to assert

their influence as Pakistans political crisis grows worse. Aziz was thrown into jail
into the electoral process. However,

after the 2007 Red Mosque attack but later released. Although there were some 27 charges pending against him at
one time, the Pakistani courts dismissed all of them. The government then asked Aziz to be part of a negotiating
team of the Taliban, which are an instrument of Pakistans Inter-Service Intelligence Group, or ISI. The Pakistani
government enlisted Aziz in an effort to have a militant interlocutor to negotiate with the TTP, which seeks the
overthrow of the Pakistani government. However, Aziz pulled out as a negotiator with the government, insisting
Shariah must replace Pakistans constitutional law. His recent move comes despite what sources say are his strong

Aziz has vowed that Islam will spread all over Pakistan, then all
over the world. As an apparent supporter of the TTP as well, Aziz backs groups that are actively training
ties to the ISI.

jihadists, including Uzbeks, who would give jihadist fighters access to all of Central Asia. He also is supportive of the
training in jihadist Pakistani camps of Chinese Uighurs, who seek to separate the westernmost Xinjiang province
from the rest of China and declare an independent Islamic state of Turkestan. Sources say Pakistans ISI has been
complicit in such training. The development has also created problems in Beijing, which sources say Aziz blames for
the reported death of his mother and brother in the July 2007 siege of Red Mosque. According to sources, Red
Mosque jihadists had targeted Chinese sex workers as part of a purification effort. The Pakistani government, then
led by President Pervez Musharraf, bent to Chinese demands and sent in Pakistani troops to storm the mosque,
which resulted in the death of hundreds of Muslims, including Aziz mother and brother. Aziz, who was at the Red
Mosque at the time of the siege, had disguised himself in a womans burka from head to toe, but he was discovered
and paraded in a humiliating fashion, sources say. Nevertheless, the Red Mosque encounter showed that

Islamic militancy, which has acted as a proxy for the Pakistani policy, especially toward India,
was becoming a threat to the government itself. Azizs backing of ISIS puts
Baghdadi and his Sunni radical caliphate in direct contact with the TTP,
Chinas Uighurs and the Afghan Taliban, which was created by the ISI. With
the Afghan Taliban biding its time until U.S. forces completely leave
Afghanistan in 2016, ISIS has the opportunity to extend its influence in
that country as well.

Pakistan instability causes indo-pak war

Pitt 9 (William, a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two
books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest
Sedition Is Silence.", Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World,
http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?
mod=article&cat=commentary&article=2183, May 8, 2009)

But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep filled with troops today, killing five and wounding as many as 21, including several children who were waiting for a ride to school. Residents of the
region where the attack took place are fleeing in terror as gunfire rings out around them, and government forces have been unable to quell the violence. Two regional government officials were beheaded by militants in retaliation for
the killing of other militants by government forces. As familiar as this sounds, it did not take place where we have come to expect such terrible events. This, unfortunately, is a whole new ballgame. It is part of another conflict that is
brewing, one which puts what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in deep shade, and which represents a grave and growing threat to us all. Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear
weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted
system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff with neighboring India

The fact that Pakistan, India, Russia, and

China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any
violence
has the real potential to crack open the gates of Hell
itself
that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century.

ongoing or escalating

and

over there

and

very

. Recently, the Taliban made a military push into the northwest Pakistani region around the Swat Valley. According to a recent Reuters report: The (Pakistani) army deployed troops in Swat in October 2007 and use d

artillery and gunship helicopters to reassert control. But insecurity mounted after a civilian government came to power last year and tried to reach a negotiated settlement. A peace accord fell apart in May 2008. After that, hundreds
including soldiers, militants and civilians died in battles. Militants unleashed a reign of terror, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents. They banned female education and destroyed nearly 200 girls'
schools. About 1,200 people were killed since late 2007 and 250,000 to 500,000 fled, leaving the militants in virtual control. Pakistan offered on February 16 to introduce Islamic law in the Swat valley and neighboring areas in a bid to
take the steam out of the insurgency. The militants announced an indefinite cease-fire after the army said it was halting operations in the region. President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation imposing sharia in the area last month.
But the Taliban refused to give up their guns and pushed into Buner and another district adjacent to Swat, intent on spreading their rule. The United States, already embroiled in a war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, must now
face the possibility that Pakistan could collapse under the mounting threat of Taliban forces there. Military and diplomatic advisers to President Obama, uncertain how best to proceed, now face one of the great nightmare scenarios of
our time. "Recent militant gains in Pakistan," reported The New York Times on Monday, "have so alarmed the White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most
serious problems we face.'" "Security was deteriorating rapidly," reported The Washington Post on Monday, "particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported,
and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland. The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary
India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan
is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence." It is
believed Pakistan is currently in possession of between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan's stability is threatened by the wide swath of its population that shares ethnic, cultural and religious connections to the
fundamentalist Islamic populace of Afghanistan, fears over what could happen to those nuclear weapons if the Pakistani government collapses are very real. "As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan,"
reported the Times last week, "senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert
sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army. But that
cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the
vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure." "The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons," reported Time Magazine last
month. "Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those
weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say." In other words, a shaky Pakistan spells trouble for everyone,

If Pakistani militants ever succeed in

Nuclear-armed India could be
as could
China or
Russia.
loose nukes
place the entire world on a collision course with unimaginable disaster
especially if America loses the footrace to secure those weapons in the event of the worst-case scenario.

toppling the government

galvanized into military action

, several very dangerous events could happen at once.

of some kind,

government does fall, and all those Pakistani nukes are not immediately accounted for and secured, the specter (or reality) of

nuclear-armed

nuclear-armed

If the Pakistani

falling into the hands of terrorist organizations could

. We have all

been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so. The developing situation in Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. The Obama administration appears to be gravely
serious about addressing the situation. So should we all.

India-Pakistan causes extinction

Starr 11 (Consequences of a Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence by Steven
Starr February 07, 2011
* Associate member of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation
* Senior Scientist for PSR)
Only a single failure of nuclear deterrence is required to start a nuclear war, and the consequences of such a failure

Peer-reviewed studies predict that less than 1% of the nuclear

weapons now deployed in the arsenals of the Nuclear Weapon States, if detonated
in urban areas, would immediately kill tens of millions of people, and cause longterm, catastrophic disruptions of the global climate and massive destruction of
Earths protective ozone layer. The result would be a global nuclear famine that could kill up to one
would be profound.

billion people. A full-scale war, fought with the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, would so
utterly devastate Earths environment that most humans and other complex forms of life would not survive. Yet no
Nuclear Weapon State has ever evaluated the environmental, ecological or agricultural consequences of the
detonation of its nuclear arsenals in conflict. Military and political leaders in these nations thus remain dangerously
unaware of the existential danger which their weapons present to the entire human race. Consequently, nuclear
weapons remain as the cornerstone of the military arsenals in the Nuclear Weapon States, where nuclear
deterrence guides political and military strategy.
Those who actively support nuclear deterrence are trained to
believe that deterrence cannot fail, so long as their doctrines are observed, and their weapons systems are
maintained and continuously modernized. They insist that their nuclear forces will remain forever under their
complete control, immune from cyberwarfare, sabotage, terrorism, human or technical error. They deny that the
short 12-to-30 minute flight times of nuclear missiles would not leave a President enough time to make rational
decisions following a tactical, electronic warning of nuclear attack. The U.S. and Russia continue to keep a total of
2000 strategic nuclear weapons at launch-ready status ready to launch with only a few minutes warning. Yet
both nations are remarkably unable to acknowledge that this high-alert status in any way increases the probability
that these weapons will someday be used in conflict. How can strategic nuclear arsenals truly be safe from
accidental or unauthorized use, when they can be launched literally at a moments notice? A cocked and loaded
weapon is infinitely easier to fire than one which is unloaded and stored in a locked safe. The mere existence of
immense nuclear arsenals, in whatever status they are maintained, makes possible their eventual use in a nuclear
war.

Our best scientists now tell us that such a war would mean the end of
human history . We need to ask our leaders: Exactly what political or national goals could possibly justify
risking a nuclear war that would likely cause the extinction of the human race ? However, in

arsenals through their

capacity to utterly devastate the Earths environment and ecosystems threaten
continued human existence . Otherwise, military and political leaders will continue to cling to their nuclear
order to pose this question, we must first make the fact known that existing nuclear

arsenals and will remain both unwilling and unable to discuss the real consequences of failure of deterrence. We
can and must end the silence, and awaken the peoples of all nations to the realization that nuclear war means

A Single Failure of Nuclear Deterrence could lead to: * A nuclear

war between India and Pakistan ; * 50 Hiroshima-size (15 kiloton) weapons
detonated in the mega-cities of both India and Pakistan (there are now 130-190
operational nuclear weapons which exist in the combined arsenals of these nations);
global nuclear suicide.

* The deaths of 20 to 50 million people as a result of the prompt effects of these nuclear detonations (blast, fire and
radioactive fallout);
* Massive firestorms covering many hundreds of square miles/kilometers (created by nuclear
detonations that produce temperatures hotter than those believed to exist at the center of the sun), that would
engulf these cities and produce 6 to 7 million tons of thick, black smoke;
* About 5 million tons of smoke that
would quickly rise above cloud level into the stratosphere, where strong winds would carry it around the Earth in 10
days;
* A stratospheric smoke layer surrounding the Earth, which would remain in place for 10 years;
* The
dense smoke would heat the upper atmosphere, destroy Earths protective ozone layer, and block 7-10% of
warming sunlight from reaching Earths surface;
* 25% to 40% of the protective ozone layer would be destroyed
at the mid-latitudes, and 50-70% would be destroyed at northern and southern high latitudes;
* Ozone
destruction would cause the average UV Index to increase to 16-22 in the U.S, Europe, Eurasia and China, with even
higher readings towards the poles (readings of 11 or higher are classified as extreme by the U.S. EPA). It would
take 7-8 minutes for a fair skinned person to receive a painful sunburn at mid-day;
* Loss of warming sunlight
would quickly produce average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere colder than any experienced in
the last 1000 years;
* Hemispheric drops in temperature would be about twice as large and last ten times longer
then those which followed the largest volcanic eruption in the last 500 years, Mt. Tambora in 1816. The following
year, 1817, was called The Year Without Summer, which saw famine in Europe from massive crop failures;
*
Growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere would be significantly shortened. It would be too cold to grow wheat
in most of Canada for at least several years;
* World grain stocks, which already are at historically low levels,
would be completely depleted; grain exporting nations would likely cease exports in order to meet their own food
needs;
* The one billion already hungry people, who currently depend upon grain imports, would likely starve to
death in the years following this nuclear war;
* The total explosive power in these 100 Hiroshima-size weapons is
less than 1% of the total explosive power contained in the currently operational and deployed U.S. and Russian
nuclear forces.

Impact Israel
Causes Israel war
Cefaratti 6/23/14(Todd, ISIS Says they Have Nuclear Weapons to Wipe-Out Israel,
http://www.tpnn.com/2014/06/23/isis-says-they-have-nuclear-weapons-to-wipe-out-israel/)

the rest of the world

is devolving into chaos. Russia is demonstrating aggression, North Korea continues to talk boldly and
While the Obama Administration works feverishly to try and cover their behinds,

the Middle East and North Africa is rapidly destabilizing, all thanks to the complete dearth of leadership emanating

Israel
may one day be a memory as ISIS claims to have access to nuclear weapons
and intends to use those weapons to obliterate Israel in order to secure
victory for Palestine. According to a report from the World Net Daily, a source claims that the Islamic
from Washington. Now, with our stature in freefall thanks to the amateurs running the State Department,

State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is working with an organized group whose efforts are focused exclusively on
destroying the Zionist regime occupying Palestine. The source quoted an ISIS fighter who said, Zionists call us
masked, sociopathic murderers, but we are much more complicated and representative of those seeking justice
than they portray us. Are we more barbaric than the Zionist terrorists who massacred at Dier Yassin, Shatila, twice

The ISIS
fighter claimed to be eager to fight Israel in order to reclaim the land for
Palestine. Acknowledging that Israel has nuclear weapons, the fighter
claimed that they, too, had access to such weapons.
at Qana, and committed dozens of other massacres? History will judge us after we free Palestine.

Escalates
Russell 09 (James, Senior lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at NPS, Strategic Stability
Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in the Middle East. Proliferation Papers, 2009)
Americas disapproval of Israeli pre-emption may reflect a reduced national appetite for military action in general,
and for unilateral strategic action. However ,

the intensity of U.S.-Israeli bilateral relations

places the United States in an extremely awkward position: on the one
hand, a cherished ally could openly be calling for the fulfillment of security
commitments77 for its protection and security in response to an external
threat; on the other hand, U.S. security commitment to its allies include
deterrence and defense, but are widely regarded as excluding
preventative actions. To summarize, systemic weaknesses in the coercive
bargaining framework induce the prospect of strategic instability in which
escalation could unfold in a number of scenarios leading to the use of
nuclear weapons by either the United States, Israel, or Iran. For purposes of this
paper, escalation means an expansion of the intensity and scope of the conflict.78 The common denominator for
the proposed scenarios is that nuclear use occurs in the context of conflict escalation a conflict that could be
initiated by a variety of different parties and in a variety of different circumstances.79 It is extremely unlikely that
either the United States or Israel would initiate the use of nuclear weapons as part of a pre-emptive attack on Irans
nuclear sites.80 However,

there are escalation scenarios involving state and nonstate actors in the coercive bargaining framework that could conceivably
lead to nuclear weapons use by Israel and/or the United States. Irans response to
what would initially start as a sustained stand-off bombardment (Desert Fox Heavy) could take a number of
different forms that might lead to escalation by the United States and Israel, surrounding states, and non-state

Once the strikes commenced, it is difficult to imagine Iran remaining

in a Saddam-like quiescent mode and hunkering down to wait out the
attacks. Iranian leaders have unequivocally stated that any attack on its
nuclear sites will result in a wider war 81 a war that could involve
regional states on both sides as well as non-state actors like Hamas and
Hezbollah. While a wider regional war need not lead to escalation and nuclear use by either Israel or the
actors.

wartime circumstances and domestic political pressures could

combine to shape decision-making in ways that present nuclear use as an
option to achieve military and political objectives. For both the United
States and Israel, Iranian or proxy use of chemical, biological or
radiological weapons represent the most serious potential escalation
triggers. For Israel, a sustained conventional bombardment of its urban
centers by Hezbollah rockets in Southern Lebanon could also trigger an
escalation spiral.
United States,

Impact Oil Shocks

ISIS Crisis creates Persian Gulf instability and volatile oil
prices- spikes economic downturn
Greiner 6/16(2014. Bill- author for Forbes.chief investment officer of Mariner Wealth
Advisors. Past chief investment officer of Scout Investments. Instability In The Middle East
And Its Global Impact. http://www.forbes.com/sites/billgreiner/2014/06/16/instability-in-themiddle-east-and-its-global-impact///GH)

ISIS (Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham) is an offshoot organization of al Qaeda that seems to be
well-financed and well-organized. The fighters of ISIS have, over a two-day
period, overrun the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit. For those counting, Mosul has a
civilian population equal to that of Philadelphia. ISIS apparently is planning on attacking
other cities, continuing to move south toward Baghdad. Four Iraqi army divisions have
melted before the ISIS onslaught. The apparent goal of ISIS? To establish a
Muslim state in the heart of the Middle East, which would directly affect
Persian Gulf stability, politics and economic activity (oil). This would
provide a safe harbor for future terrorist activitie s something the
United States and other nations fear. As noted above, I am a student of history. Lets take a
look at other unsettling historical events in the Middle East and how they have affected oil prices. Oil was
trading at $106 per barrel late last week, up from a low of $91 per barrel earlier this year.
Over the last week, oil prices have risen by about $4 per barrel , a slight reaction
We have a new organization in the Middle East, of which many in our country havent been aware.

to the events occurring in Iraq. Since 1990, there have been 21 destabilizing events that have occurred in the
Middle East. From Operation Desert Storm in 1990 to the Anbar Clashes in 2013, the area has had both major and
minor political/military disruptions. Over the last 23 years, on average, oil prices have risen by 5.4% 30 days
following the beginning of a disruption as compared to the current oil price increase of 3.9% (to date). It is
interesting to note that, on average, oil prices havent simply risen over the first week of a Middle East crisis.

Normally, following the first period of price surge, still-higher prices

follow. Historically, three months after the start of the crisis event in the
Middle East, oil prices have risen by 9.2% from their pre-crisis levels. If
this average holds true, the world can expect oil prices to approach $112
per barrel later this summer. Who (or what countries) pays the price for rising oil costs? Historically,
the OECD countries (large, developed countries) have been the largest consumers of oil in the world. However, that
historical truism has changed over the last number of years. The OECD (developed countries) consumed 72% of the
worlds oil production in 1992. Today, that percentage has fallen to 49%! The non-OECD ( developing)

countries now consume 51% of the worlds energy output. The negative
economic impact of rising oil prices has historically hurt the developed
world more dramatically than the emerging economies . No more. The situation in
Iraq is constantly changing. Nonetheless, the fragility of the political/military
environment in Iraq is so high that we expect oil prices to remain volatile
during this period of unsettlement. As highlighted above, disturbance in our national economic
environment due to an upward push in oil supply disruptions isnt as high as it has been in the past. Nonetheless,

oil price volatility when extreme can lead to overall financial market
unsettlement.

ISIS expansion threatens Iraqi oil production risks global oil

shocks
Johnson 14 (Keith, correspondent for Foreign Policy ISIS and the Long-Term Threat to Iraqi Oil, Foreign
Policy, 6/17, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/06/17/isis_and_the_long_term_threat_to_iraqi_oil)

The real problem posed by the offensive unleashed by the Islamic State of Iraq and alSham (ISIS) is not what happens to Iraqi oil production this week, but whether OPEC's secondbiggest producer can meet outsized production-growth expectations for the
rest of the decade. If it can't, energy analysts say, the world's inexorable thirst for oil
could soon collide with limited growth in supply, leading to higher prices
and lower economic growth in the United States and around the world. Iraqi forces
in Baghdad braced for the possible arrival of ISIS fighters on Tuesday, June 17, and the
southward spread of violent insurgents forced the closure of Iraq's biggest
oil refinery and the evacuation of foreign personnel working there. The shutdown and evacuation of the Baiji
refinery -- prompted by fears of ISIS mortar attacks -- won't directly affect Iraqi oil output, but it does threaten

So far, ISIS militants have not threatened

Iraq's giant oil fields; most of those are farther south, and oil exports are still flowing out of the country
through ports far from ISIS-held territories in the north. The relative security prevailing in the
south, where exports could hit near-record levels of 2.8 million barrels a day next month, is keeping a lid
on oil prices. Crude trading in New York and London held steady at about $106 and $113 a barrel,
domestic supplies of refined petroleum products.

respectively, or roughly 3 percent higher than before the ISIS march began. There is another potentially bright spot
in the Iraqi oil sector: the quasi-independent Kurdish region in the north. Kurdish troops have so far stood up to ISIS
and kept their territory free from insurgent attacks. And now that Kurdish forces occupy the historically contested
city of Kirkuk and its significant adjacent oil fields, the Kurds are in a much better position to jump-start exports to

the International Energy Agency

projected that Iraqi output will account for 60 percent of all OPEC
production growth for the rest of the decade. "Given Iraq's precarious
political and security situation, the forecast is laden with downside risk ," the
countries such as Turkey. In a significant oil-market report released Tuesday,
(IEA)

report said. And it's not just Iraq: In many OPEC nations, the IEA said, "political turmoil and security concerns are a
growing impediment to supply growth, if not a cause of outright disruptions." Iraq's centrality to oil's future was

Affordable oil
"would seem to need a lot of incremental oil supply from Iraq, while all the current
also underscored by Energy Aspects, a London-based energy consultancy, on Tuesday.

dynamics suggest that the flood may be just a trickle," the group said. Even though the United States' recent oil-

Iraq's importance to world oil

supplies will only become more crucial after 2020 because the market is counting on Iraq meeting
production boom has helped offset oil-market struggles elsewhere,

very ambitious output targets. "It is difficult to overstate the importance of Iraq to the long term outlook for oil
markets," said Securing America's Future Energy, a group that advocates reducing U.S. dependence on oil, in a
report Tuesday.

Even if high prices are okay, abrupt shocks are devastating

Ronald Bailey, 3-8-2011; award-winning science correspondent for Reason
magazine; Oil Price Shocks and the Recession of 2011?
http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/08/oil-price-shocks-and-the-reces
Hamilton is not arguing that oil price shocks are the sole cause of
recessions, but that they tip an already vulnerable economy into
contraction. A 2010 study by economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank agrees: For
most countries, oil shocks do affect the likelihood of entering a recession.
In particular, an average-sized shock to WTI [West Texas Intermediate crude] oil prices
increases the probability of recession in the U.S. by nearly 50 percentage
points after one year and nearly 90 percentage points after two years . On
the other hand, a 2005 study by the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum found that when oil prices
move gradually higher (perhaps somewhat erratically), as they have done over the last
several years, they do not directly result in economic recessions, even though the

Gradual price increases do not derail economic

growth because consumers and entrepreneurs are able to adjust smoothly
to them. So how do oil shocks cause recessions? Hamilton and many other analysts
economy may grow modestly slower.

note that the actual amount spent on oil relative to the overall size of the economy initially suggests
that the effect of a price increase should be relatively small. For example, as a result of the 1973 oil
embargo, the world spent an extra $5.1 billion ($23 billion in 2009 dollars) on oil. Yet, U.S. real GDP

One of the key ways oil

price hikes negatively affect the U.S. economy is by provoking a decline in
demand for new automobiles. Unemployed autoworkers and idled factories cant
be rapidly deployed to other sectors. In addition, uncertainty over oil prices
also leads people and firms to postpone purchases of capital and durable
goods. While higher oil prices contribute to recessions, lower oil prices do
not appear to have much effect on economic expansions. People may postpone
declined by 2.5 percent, which is about $38 billion ($164 billion).

buying a new car when gas prices are high, but they dont rush out to buy one just because pump
prices are low. So will the recent run up in the price of crude push the U.S. economy back into
recession? The good news is that the U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3.2 percent in the most recent
quarter, and gross domestic product has returned to the level it reached in 2007. On March 1, Federal
Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the Senates Committee on Banking, Housing, and

rises in the prices of oil or other commodities would

represent a threat both to economic growth and to overall price stability,
particularly if they were to cause inflation expectations to become less
well anchored.
Urban Affairs that sustained

Global war
Harris and Burrows, 9 *counselor in the National Intelligence Council, the
principal drafter of Global Trends 2025, **member of the NICs Long Range Analysis
Unit Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis, Washington
Quarterly, http://www.twq.com/09april/docs/09apr_burrows.pdf)

Increased Potential for Global Conflict

Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of
intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample opportunity for unintended
consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to
believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include
the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the
sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not

the potential for

greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic
environment as they would be if change would be steadier.
be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which

In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource
issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorisms appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and
youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and
scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within their reach.

Terrorist groups in 2025

will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups inheriting organizational structures, command and
control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks and newly emergent collections of the angry

self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become

narrower in an economic downturn .
and disenfranchised that become

The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S.

military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Irans acquisition of nuclear

worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region

to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional
weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent
weapons is not inevitable,

relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a
nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended
escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of
potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems

The lack of
strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and
uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than
defense, potentially leading to escalating crises.
also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack.

Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources,
could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neomercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to
take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies . In the worst case, this could
result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be
essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important

Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and
modernization efforts, such as Chinas and Indias development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus
geopolitical implications.

focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval
capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create
opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle
East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in

more dog-eat-dog world.

Impact Iraqi Instability

ISIS increasing kill rates and eroding state control- escalation
decreasing chances of successful settlement
Wood and Kathman 9/3(2014. Reed- assistant professor in the School of Politics and
Global Studies at Arizona State University. Jacob- an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Debating the Benefits of Rebel
Brutality. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/03/debating-the-benefitsof-rebel-brutality///GH)
According to United Nations estimates, the Islamic State, formerly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS),

has killed thousands of civilians including children in recent

months. Many more civilians have been wounded and upward of half a
million have been displaced by violence. The Islamic State is, of course, not alone in
intentionally targeting civilians for violence. Groups such as the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda, Boko Haram in
Nigeria and opposition fighters in South Sudan purposefully kill, maim and abduct thousands of civilians as they
pursue their objectives, with disturbing frequency. Why? What motivates armed groups to commit atrocities against

Recent scholarship highlights a number of possible explanations for

this bloodthirsty behavior, including a groups depth of territorial control,
access to lucrative resources, prewar political cleavages, and tactical and
material losses. Most recent studies begin with the core assumption that
such violence is inherently strategic. In other words, insurgent groups
perpetuate anti-civilian violence as a means of achieving preferred conflict
outcomes. But scholars have rarely assessed the impact of civilian targeting on a groups ability to attain its
civilians?

strategic objectives, particularly its longer-term political goals. This might be because the costs associated with

The costs of anti-civilian violence (and

the disruptions and dissatisfaction it causes) fall more heavily on the
state, even when the insurgents are responsible for the violence. A governments successful counterinsurgency
insurgent attacks on civilians are not evenly distributed:

campaign is predicated on maintaining order and (re)establishing control over unstable areas. Conversely

disorder, instability and the erosion of state control directly benefit

insurgents. Thus, when insurgents rely on civilian victimization, they impose
significant costs on the state while absorbing relatively fewer costs
themselves. In addition, by attacking civilians, rebels send credible signals to the state
about their willingness to continue fighting a long, costly and brutal war.
Faced with asymmetric costs and this signal of a long and costly war to come, governments are
increasingly likely to make concessions as groups increasingly resort to
atrocious tactics. Beyond a certain point, however, brutality undermines the bargaining process.
Attacks on civilians can effectively shift bargaining power away from the
government and toward insurgents. Initially, positive shifts in rebel
bargaining power increase the likelihood that the group achieves policy
concessions from the state. However, beyond a certain point, these shifts may
embolden the rebels, encouraging them to reject government concessions as their belief in their own
future victory increases. Our results thus imply a curvilinear relationship between civilian targeting and the

violence initially increases and then diminishes the

odds of successful settlement.
probability of a negotiated settlement wherein

Impact Power Grid

Collapses the power grid kills 9/10 people
Gaffney 9/3/14 (FRANK J. GAFFNEY, Political Analyst, WILL ISIS STRIKE AMERICA'S ACHILLES HEEL?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/03/Will-ISIS-Strike-Americas-Achilles-Heel)

IS plans an imminent
attack in this country. In light of the latest murderous attack by this organization against an American
Worse yet, the Texas Department of Public Safety believes there is evidence that

journalist, Steven Sotloff, among other atrocities, such threats must be taken with the utmost seriousness. Among
the targets national security professionals fear may now be in the jihadis' crosshairs is Americas exceedingly
vulnerable electric grid. A panel discussion being held at the National Press Club in Washington Wednesday

a spate of recent attacks involving sabotage and

destruction of property at various electric substations here and elsewhere
could be leading indicators of the next 9/11 one potentially vastly more
destructive than the original which occurred thirteen years ago next week. One of the experts participating in
afternoon will show how

the event organized by the Secure the Grid Coalition (www.SecuretheGrid.com), Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, has warned
that the

sort of collusion that has been taking place between jihadist groups
could allow such a scenario to be
actualized. After all, last October, the Knights Templar narco-traffickers
blacked out the grid of the Mexican state of Michoacan to murder law
enforcement personnel and others. And last June, a substation serving the
border and city of Nogales, Arizona was nearly destroyed by an improvised
explosive device. Dr. Pry and two other nationally renowned experts on the grid vulnerability issue
like the Islamic State and Latin American drug cartels

former Defense Department official and author F. Michael Maloof and former Air Force Deputy Assistant Secretary
and Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Amb. Henry F. Cooper will discuss the various naturally occurring
and man-induced phenomena that threaten our bulk power distribution system and, with it, all the other critical
infrastructures that depend upon the grid to supply the necessities of life in 21st-century America. Of particular
concern is the prospect that,

in the event attacks are mounted successfully against

a handful of critical U.S. facilities operating high voltage transformers,
widespread and protracted blackouts could occur across the U nited States.
By one official estimate, should the power go out and stay out for over a year, nine out of ten
Americans would likely perish. Such a horrifying prospect has moved some in Hollywood to lend
their celebrity and skills to raising public awareness about the need to make the electric grid more resilient. A
leader in that effort is Kelly Carlson, an accomplished Hollywood actor who has been active on national and
maritime security issues and serves as member of the Secure the Grid Coalition. She will be participating in the
panel discussion via Skype and will present several videos that will begin rolling out nationally this week. The timing

the growing evidence of our vulnerability to a

truly existential threat. It also anticipates deliberations in the Congress later this month on legislation
of this discussion not only responds to

sponsored by Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona and Pete Sessions of Texas and strongly supported by House Homeland
Security Chairman Michael McCaul. Known as the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, this measure would require
the Department of Homeland Security to make a focus for a new National Planning Scenario a particularly
destructive means of attacking the electric grid: a high-altitude nuclear detonation unleashing electromagnetic

Cooper will draw upon his experience overseeing the

sorts of techniques that the Pentagon has used for more than fifty years
to protect its critical assets (principally the nuclear deterrent forces, missile defenses and associated
command and control) to illuminate measures that could be used cost-effectively
and reasonably quickly to secure the grid against EMP and other perils. The
pulse (EMP) over large areas. Dr.

death and destruction now being meted out routinely by the Islamic State and assorted other shariah-adherent
terrorists calls to mind one of the lessons drawn by the 9/11 Commission about the murderous suicidal aircraft
hijackings of that black day thirteen years ago: The Commissioners described our unpreparedness for that act of
jihad as a failure of imagination. We dare not indulge in such a failure again especially in the face of mounting

todays terrorists have the imagination, the ability, and the

desire to take down our grid.
evidence that

Independently controls all conflict escalation

Kramer et. al 12 (Franklin D. Kramer is a distinguished research fellow in the Center for Technology
and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. He served as the assistant secretary of defense for
international security affairs from 1996 to 2001. Stuart H. Starr is also a distinguished research fellow in the Center
for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. He concurrently serves as the
president of the Barcroft Research Institute. Larry Wentz is a senior research fellow in the Center for Technology and
National Security Policy at the National Defense University., Cyberpower and National Security, p. 318)

Credible prospects for determining attribution of responsibility during many actual cyber attacks can be illuminated

Iran threatens or actually uses cyber

attacks to advance its interests in the Middle East, seeking to compel U.S.
military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, to assert control over the Strait
of Hormuz, or to intimidate Saudi Arabia and Israel. Such an Iranian effort would not be
limited to cyberpower: instead, cyber threats or attacks would probably be
part of a larger campaign that would employ other instruments, such as
use of declaratory policy, diplomacy, or military forces, or control of
access to oil. In this scenario, the Iranian government might try to conceal its identity as a cyber
by illustrative scenarios. In the first hypothetical scenario,

attacker, but equally plausible, it might openly threaten use of cyber tools in order to strengthen its leverage and

the source of its

cyber attacks probably would not be formidably difficult to determine .
Intelligence information about attacker identities can be gathered from
sources beyond the cyber activities themselves: the strategic context
would reveal a great deal about the attacker, and U.S. officials would be
able to use technical data, all-source intelligence, and logical inference.
bargaining power. Even if the attacker tried to conceal its identity in the cyber realm,

a North Korean effort to intimidate the Republic of

to set the stage for a military invasion
of the ROK. North Korea might, for example, launch cyber attacks on the United
States, Japan, and South Korea in an effort to gain leverage over all three
countries. Such cyber attacks would not be conducted in isolation of other events, but would be part of North
Koreas overall efforts to use diplomacy, its possession of nuclear weapons and missile
delivery systems, its conventional military power, and other instruments
at its disposal. If North Korea intended to conduct a military invasion of
South Korea, its cyber attacks might try to blind ROK forces, delay the
deployment of U.S. reinforcements from the continental United States,
and degrade the combat effectiveness of U.S. military forces. Here too, North
The second illustrative scenario is that of

Korea (ROK) into making major concessions, or even

Korea might not want to conceal its identity as a cyber attacker, but might choose instead to broadcast it clearly in
order to strengthen its leverage and bargaining power. Even if it tried to conceal its identity, the source of its
activity in the cyber realm most likely could be determined. In such a crisis, it is unlikely that any other potential
cyber attacker would choose this particular pattern of activity.

a hypothetical East Asian crisis in which China seeks a

showdown over Taiwan in order to intimidate or even to conquer it . In such
a crisis, China might resort to major cyber attacks directed against the
United States, Taiwan, and Japan. Its cyber attack on the United States
might be intended to deter Washington from intervention in the crisis, to prevent it
from deploying air and naval reinforcements to the area, and to prevent
U.S. military forces from defending Taiwan and from attacking China in
event of hostilities. Here again, Chinas cyber attacks would not be conducted in isolation,
A third scenario is

be a component of its overall strategy and use of its political,

diplomatic, and military power. China would have no special incentive to conceal its cyber identity
but would

at a time when it is provoking a grand showdown over Taiwan and the future of the entire East Asia security order.
Instead, it would be more likely to make its cyber identity known to all of its adversaries in order to enhance its

it would not have much hope of

success under the prying eyes of U.S. all-source intelligence.
leverage over them. Even if it sought to conceal its cyber identity,

As these three scenarios suggest, in the event of major cyber attacks by

nation-states on the United States, attribution during crises might be less
of a crippling problem than it is commonly presumed to be. Some cyber attacks by
terrorists might also fall into this category. To be sure, some terrorist attacks might be conducted purely for
vengeance and destruction and there- fore might not be directly linked to a specific political-strategic agenda that
would motivate the attackers to proclaim responsibility for their actions, or that would make them obvious suspects.
Yet even terrorist groups tend to have explicit political agendas such as, for example, driving the United States out
of Iraq, Afghanistan, or the entire Middle East. Such an agenda could not be readily pursued by leaving the United
States blind to the cyber attackers strategic intent and demands and thus to its identity. The bottom line is that,

while attribution will remain a problem that mandates development of

better technical capabilities, many potentially big cyber attacks on the
United States are likely to arise out of a specific strategic context, aimed
at concrete goals such as altering U.S. foreign policy and defense
strategy, and therefore will be possible to attribute to specific attackers .
Cyber attacks of this sort fall into the category of events that can be
treated by the familiar logic of deterrence.
What the United States must avoid is a crisis situation in which it is confronted
by a potential or actual cyber attacker whose identity is known, but for
whom the American government does not already possess a wellconceived deterrent strategy showing how it can best respond . In such a
situation, the United States could be compelled to resort to improvisation,
but without the time to think through the details of response mechanisms
or to make the necessary preparations. As a result, it might act incorrectly
or weakly in ways that produce serious reversals. By drawing upon deterrence
theory, whose components are discussed below, it can reduce the dangers arising from such
crisis situations and from cyber threats more generally.

Impact EMP
Theyll use EMP or any attack to wreck the power grid
WND 9/1/14 (World News Daily citing Dr. Peter Pry executive director of the Task Force on National and
Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, EXPERT: 'IMMINENT' ISIS THREAT TO U.S.
POWER GRID http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/08/expert-imminent-isis-threat-to-u-s-powergrid/#8ash9IqUIZXDyKVo.99)

ISIS terrorists pose an imminent threat to the U.S. electric grid with the
capacity to coordinate a devastating assault on our nations infrastructure,
warned a leading homeland security and terrorism expert in a radio interview Sunday. Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA
officer, is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear
Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards. He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the
Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, and the House Armed Services Committee. There

is an
imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a
single U.S. city, said Pry. Pry was speaking on Aaron Klein Investigative Radio on New Yorks AM 970 The
Answer. Outlining the threat, Pry recalled a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report divulged this
past March that coordinated terrorist attacks on just nine of the nations 55,000 electrical power substations could

Such an attack would mirror the

devastating impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack without the
need for any nuclear device or delivery system. The chances of a major electrical outage
provoke coast-to-coast blackouts for up to 18 months.

across America are now surging. Get your autographed copy of A Nation Forsaken which probes this crucial issue.

The congressional EMP Commission previously estimated that within 12

months of a nationwide blackout, upwards of 90 percent of the U.S.
population could possibly die from disease, lack of food and resources and
larger societal breakdown. Speaking to Kleins audience, Pry pointed specifically to the
possibility of ISIS immediately hiring Mexican extremists such as the
Knights Templar drug cartel, which last year successfully utilized guns and
Molotov cocktails to attack numerous Mexican power stations, leaving 11
towns without electricity. Now those guys are just across our southern
border, stated Pry. Pry continued: That means that ISIS doesnt have to actually come to
the United States on those U.S. passports. You know, Obama is always talking about how
hes got a phone. Well, ISIS has got a telephone, too. All theyve got to do is contact the Knights Templar, wire these
guys $10 million, I mean theyll do anything for money. And say, Hey, go across that open U.S. border and take out

an
attack on the U.S. power grid wouldnt be difficult for them. There are
open-source computer models where you can figure out which are those
nine critical transformer substations where if attacked would take down
the whole national power grid, he said. So something like that could be arranged. It could happen
tomorrow. It could happen next week. Pry pointed out ISIS allies in al-Qaida last June attacked power
the electric grid in Arizona, or New Mexico, or Minnesota or New York. Or the entire nation. Pry surmised such

lines in Yemen that left the entire nation without power for a day. He took issue with a statement last week from
former deputy director of the CIA Mike Morell who said it would take ISIS two to three years to develop the capacity
to carry out a 9/11-style attack. Morell stated that over

the long term two and a half, three years we

need to worry about a 9/11-style attack by ISIS. Countered Pry: I dont think
thats true at all. You know, because they can hire these criminal gangs
that are south of our porous border. Or criminal gangs that are already
present here. We also have Muslim terror cells already in this country that would be willing to do anything
for money and its very easy to attack the electrical grid, he added. Pry also warned of rogue
nations such as Iran and North Korea passing ISIS a nuclear device and
delivery system, such as a SCUD missile, to launch an actual EMP attack.

Impact Power Grid (Econ)

Theyll use EMP or any attack to wreck the power grid
WND 9/1/14 (World News Daily citing Dr. Peter Pry executive director of the Task Force on National and
Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, EXPERT: 'IMMINENT' ISIS THREAT TO U.S.
POWER GRID http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/08/expert-imminent-isis-threat-to-u-s-powergrid/#8ash9IqUIZXDyKVo.99)

ISIS terrorists pose an imminent threat to the U.S. electric grid with the
capacity to coordinate a devastating assault on our nations infrastructure,
warned a leading homeland security and terrorism expert in a radio interview Sunday. Dr. Peter Pry, a former CIA
officer, is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear
Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards. He also served on the Congressional EMP Commission, the
Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, and the House Armed Services Committee. There

is an
imminent threat from ISIS to the national electric grid and not just to a
single U.S. city, said Pry. Pry was speaking on Aaron Klein Investigative Radio on New Yorks AM 970 The
Answer. Outlining the threat, Pry recalled a leaked U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report divulged this
past March that coordinated terrorist attacks on just nine of the nations 55,000 electrical power substations could

Such an attack would mirror the

devastating impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack without the
need for any nuclear device or delivery system. The chances of a major electrical outage
provoke coast-to-coast blackouts for up to 18 months.

across America are now surging. Get your autographed copy of A Nation Forsaken which probes this crucial issue.

The congressional EMP Commission previously estimated that within 12

months of a nationwide blackout, upwards of 90 percent of the U.S.
population could possibly die from disease, lack of food and resources and
larger societal breakdown. Speaking to Kleins audience, Pry pointed specifically to the
possibility of ISIS immediately hiring Mexican extremists such as the
Knights Templar drug cartel, which last year successfully utilized guns and
Molotov cocktails to attack numerous Mexican power stations, leaving 11
towns without electricity. Now those guys are just across our southern
border, stated Pry. Pry continued: That means that ISIS doesnt have to actually come to
the United States on those U.S. passports. You know, Obama is always talking about how
hes got a phone. Well, ISIS has got a telephone, too. All theyve got to do is contact the Knights Templar, wire these
guys $10 million, I mean theyll do anything for money. And say, Hey, go across that open U.S. border and take out

an
attack on the U.S. power grid wouldnt be difficult for them. There are
open-source computer models where you can figure out which are those
nine critical transformer substations where if attacked would take down
the whole national power grid, he said. So something like that could be arranged. It could happen
tomorrow. It could happen next week. Pry pointed out ISIS allies in al-Qaida last June attacked power
the electric grid in Arizona, or New Mexico, or Minnesota or New York. Or the entire nation. Pry surmised such

lines in Yemen that left the entire nation without power for a day. He took issue with a statement last week from
former deputy director of the CIA Mike Morell who said it would take ISIS two to three years to develop the capacity
to carry out a 9/11-style attack. Morell stated that over

the long term two and a half, three years we

need to worry about a 9/11-style attack by ISIS. Countered Pry: I dont think
thats true at all. You know, because they can hire these criminal gangs
that are south of our porous border. Or criminal gangs that are already
present here. We also have Muslim terror cells already in this country that would be willing to do anything
for money and its very easy to attack the electrical grid, he added. Pry also warned of rogue
nations such as Iran and North Korea passing ISIS a nuclear device and
delivery system, such as a SCUD missile, to launch an actual EMP attack.

Blackouts will destroy the US economy

Jacobs 12 [Deborah L., India-Style Blackout Could Strike The U.S.,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/08/06/india-style-blackout-couldstrike-the-u-s/, nrb]

Our day-to-day interactions are guided

by technologies and innovations that rely upon the power grid. But as we continue to
develop technological mastery, our power grid is aging and fragile, and its susceptibility to
outages means our way of life could break down in an instant.
The U.S. is one of the most developed nations in the world.

businesses are now connected through a vast network of

computers and data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity . Our
Unlike generations past, our lives and

homes are bigger, with more luxuries and appliances than ever. We count on power in ways our parents couldnt
imagine.
Power quality is the measure of reliable power in our homes and businesses, and it has been declining steadily
since 1990. During this time, demand for power has increased by 25%, but the infrastructure needed to transmit

We have become a digital society, but are

burdened with an analog power gridone that is inefficient and susceptible to weather,
surging demand, and even terrorist attack.
power to homes has increased by a mere 7%.

the average cost of a one-second outage among industrial

and digital firms is about $1,477. That means the U.S. economy loses between $104 billion
and $164 billion each year to power outages. Losses like that affect all of us. An outage
lasting days, as in India, would represent hundreds of billions of dollars lost, taxing our
already fragile economy.
Each outage comes at a cost;

Economic collapse causes nuclear war

Kemp 10Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in
the White House under Ronald Reagan, special assistant to the president for
national security affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on
the National Security Council Staff, Former Director, Middle East Arms Control
Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [Geoffrey Kemp, 2010,
The East Moves West: India, China, and Asias Growing Presence in the Middle East,
p. 233-4]
The second scenario, called Mayhem and Chaos, is the opposite of the first scenario; everything that can go wrong

The world economic situation weakens rather than strengthens,

India, China, and Japan suffer a major reduction in their growth rates,
further weakening the global economy. As a result, energy demand falls and the
price of fossil fuels plummets, leading to a financial crisis for the energyproducing states, which are forced to cut back dramatically on expansion
programs and social welfare. That in turn leads to political unrest: and
nurtures different radical groups, including, but not limited to, Islamic extremists. The
internal stability of some countries is challenged, and there are more failed
states. Most serious is the collapse of the democratic government in Pakistan
does go wrong.
and

and its takeover by Muslim extremists, who then take possession of a

large number of nuclear weapons. The danger of war between India and
Pakistan increases significantly. Iran, always worried about an extremist Pakistan, expands and
weaponizes its nuclear program. That further enhances nuclear proliferation
in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt joining Israel and
Iran as nuclear states. Under these circumstances, the potential for nuclear
terrorism increases, and the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack in
either the Western world or in the oil-producing states may lead to a
further devastating collapse of the world economic market, with a
tsunami-like impact on stability. In this scenario, major disruptions can be
expected, with dire consequences for two-thirds of the planets
population.

Impact Ethnic Cleansing

ISIS causes ethnic cleansing
Hines 9/2/14 (Nico, The Daily Beast, Amnesty Report: ISIS Committing Ethnic Cleansing on an Historic
Scale, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/02/amnesty-report-isis-committing-ethnic-cleansing-on-anhistoric-scale.html)

An ISIS fighter approached a Christian woman two weeks ago and lifted the 3year-old child from her arms. Little Kristina wailed as she was taken out of sight of her mother; she
has not been seen since. This heartless crime, carried out in northern Iraq, is just the latest
act in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing which is being carried out
on an historic scale by the so-called Islamic State, according to a report by Amnesty
International. The human rights organization says thousands of women and children have been abducted, while
men and boys over the age of 12 have been massacred, in a calculated campaign to drive non-Muslims out of the
area. Its a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing, Donatella Rovera, author of the Amnesty report, told The Daily
Beast. I can see it happening in front of my eyes very quickly. Amnesty has spoken to hundreds of survivors some
of whom watched family members and neighbors lined up along the edge of mass graves and shot dead, executionstyle. In two of the killings, detailed in the report, up to 90 civilians were shot in the back after being separated from
their wives and children and made to kneel before their killers. The massacres took place in areas where the Yazidi
community had refused to flee and stood up to defend themselves against ISIS. Their relatives and their
community were made to pay a very heavy price, said Rovera. There is a double aim for that particular level of
brutality, which is to punish those who tried to resist and to set an example. The propaganda has worked if you look
at large areas of the country where they have been able to take overthey really havent had to fight for it at all
they were pretty much able to walk in unopposed. If the most brazen acts of mass murder were a threat and a
warning to the Yazidi and potential pockets of resistance elsewhere in Iraq, there was no apparent motive for the
abduction of Kristina. Her mother told Amnesty: One of the armed men took her from me and walked away with
her in his arms. She was crying. There was nothing I could do. I pray to God that they will release her soon and let
her come back home. I cannot sleep; all I can think of is my little girl. Mirze Ezdin, a lawyer, is another of those
desperately awaiting news of his missing family. Forty-five relatives, all women and children, were taken by ISIS
fighters in Qiniyeh. Holding up a picture of two of his nieces, he said: Can you imagine these little ones in the
hands of those criminals? Alina is barely 3... We dont know if they are alive or dead or what has happened to
them. Those criminals took their killing spree to tiny Kocho just south of Sinjar on August 15. A group of Yazidi had
been trapped by fighting in the village, which has a population of 1,200. ISIS fighters told the residents to gather at
the local high school where they took their phones, jewelry and cash. They were separated into groups of men,
women, and children. The men were packed into vehicles, taken out a short distance and shot. Not everyone was

the haphazard mass executions. Eight survivors from a group of

about 100 lived to tell their story. One of those was Elias Salah, 59, a nurse. He was shot but did
not receive a fatal wound. They got us off the vehicle and made us crouch on the
ground in a tight cluster and one of them photographed us. I thought then
theyd let us go after that, but they opened fire at us from behind. I was
hit in the left knee, but the bullet only grazed my knee. I let myself fall
forward, as if I were dead, and I stayed there face down without moving.
When the shooting stopped I kept still and after they left, I ran away , he
said. I dont know who the others were; I was too scared to look around, I couldnt focus. I dont know
what happened to my family, my wife, my seven children, my sons wife
and their two children; I dont know if they are dead or alive or where they
are. I only now learned from one of the survivors from another group that
my brother Amin and his 10-year-old son Asem were both killed, God bless
them.
killed in

ISIS threatens global genocide- we have a moral obligation to

address the issue
Fischer 9/3(2014. Joschka- Germanys foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005,
was a leader of the German Green Party for almost 20 years. As Pax Americana disintegrates, the

world faces great chaos. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2014/Sep-04/269483-aspax-americana-disintegrates-the-world-faces-great-chaos.ashx#axzz3CJtHoUGh//GH)

The chaotic consequences of the gradual disintegration of Pax Americana

are becoming increasingly clear. For seven decades, the United States safeguarded a global
framework, which however imperfect, and regardless of how many mistakes the superpower made generally
guaranteed a minimum level of stability. At the very least, Pax Americana was an essential component of Western

The staggering
accumulation of crises and conflicts facing the world today in Ukraine,
Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Libya are linked to Americas new stance. Should matters
security. But the U.S. is no longer willing or able to be the worlds policeman.

come to a head in another seismic zone of world politics namely in East Asia the world would confront a global
catastrophe stemming from the synchronicity of numerous regional crises. Obviously, it would be a crisis that no

The crisis in Iraq, and the horrific violence of ISIS there

and in Syria, is largely the result of the Wests decision not to intervene in
the Syrian civil war. The foreign-policy realists opposed a supposedly
idealistic humanitarian intervention. The results are now clear: a humanitarian disaster and
one could control or contain.

a grave challenge to the Arab Middle East as it has been constituted for the last century. The controversy in Europe

ISIS is threatening
to kill or enslave all members of religious and ethnic minorities who do not
immediately convert to Islam or flee. With the world watching while ISIS
has threatened genocide, taking action against the group is a moral duty .
about arming the Kurds seems bizarre in light of the situation in Iraq. Before our eyes,

Questions regarding, for example, what happens after the fighting ends to the weapons given to the Kurds are of

Iraqs national
army is all but incapable of defeating ISIS, while the Kurdish militias could but only if they
are equipped with modern weapons. A victory for ISIS in northern Iraq, or even just the
capture of Irbil, the Kurdish Regional Governments capital, would cause not just an
unparalleled humanitarian disaster; it would also pose an enormous
political threat to the greater Middle East and world peace . So the nexus between
secondary importance. In terms of realpolitik, this argument is strengthened by the fact that

values and interests is self-evident and renders the conflict over fundamental foreign-policy principles irrelevant.

A Middle East with a brutal, unfettered

terrorist state at its center would be a direct threat to the safety of
neighboring Europe. So why not help those in Iraq who are willing and able to confront this peril?
This is particularly true for the European Union.

Impact Hegemony
ISIS is a direct challenge to Middle East stability and the global
economy Congressional authorization is vital to restoring the
credibility of U.S. leadership globally
Kitfield 8/20/14 (James Kitfield a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress
and a Defense One contributor. He is a former senior correspondent for National Journal and has written on defense,
national security and foreign policy issues from Washington, D.C. for more than two decades, Why America Should
Declare War on the Islamic State Defense One, http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2014/08/why-america-shoulddeclare-war-islamic-state/92003/)
As Obama said during a press conference earlier this week, the administration is already closely consulting
Congress on the Iraq crisis, because when confronting a threat like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the United

ISISs brutal execution of American journalist

James Foley is just the latest atrocity that has clarified the growing threat
posed by what is arguably the most powerful terrorist group in history. The
States needs to show a united front.

United States of America will continue to do what we must do to protect our people. We will be vigilant and we will
be relentless. When people harm Americans anywhere, we do whats necessary to see that justice is done and we
act against ISIL, standing alongside others, Obama said this morning in comments about Foleys execution. Even
as he spoke, Pentagon officials confirmed that they are contemplating sending additional U.S. troops to Iraq, to help
secure Baghdad. From governments and peoples across the Middle East, there has to be a common effort to

And yet acting under existing

authorities in Iraq, the administrations response to the spread of the ISIS
cancer has so far been reactive and piecemeal, constantly ceding the initiative to the ISIS
extract this cancer so that it does not spread, Obama said.

extremists. When explaining U.S. airstrikes that enabled Iraqi and Kurdish forces to recapture the Mosul Dam in his
press conference, for instance, Obama said he was acting to protect U.S. personnel in the Baghdad embassy
hundreds of miles away. Really? Such

tortured explanations of the logic behind the use

of U.S. military force may comport with the commander in chiefs constitutional authority to protect
American citizens. They sound an uncertain trumpet to allies in the region, however,
who are desperate for U.S. leadership. The resignation of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki
represents a victory for the Obama administration, and it should be exploited. Throughout the crisis senior
administration officials rightly insisted that increased U.S. assistance would be contingent on the formation of a
national unity government in Baghdad that did not include the divisive Shiite strongman. Now that Maliki is out of
the way, President Obama has to decide on the quantity and quality of that assistance.

To have any hope

of holding Iraq together, and making good on President Obamas promise this week to pursue a longterm strategy to turn the tide against [ISIS], U.S. military support to the Iraqi Security
Forces will have to be significant. Put simply, the administration needs to articulate a strategy for
Iraq, and settle on a plan for executing it that is backed at home and understood in Iraq and the region. Some
congressional leaders want a say in such an important decision, and they have a point. Washington is overdue for a

Far better for

lawmakers to debate the stakes involved in Iraq now, and to put down a marker,
rather than ducking the issue and heaping endless criticism on the administration
for mission creep, unilateralism, and presidential imperialism. That is a
prescription for continued administration tentativeness and the kind of
feckless leadership for which Washington, unfortunately, is gaining a global
reputation. This is not about an imperial presidency. Its about a Congress thats reluctant to cast tough votes
serious debate about what U.S. national interests are threatened by the Iraq crisis.

on U.S. military action, Kaine, the Virginia Democrat, told The New York Times this week. We should not be putting
American men and womens lives at risk if we are not willing to do the political work to reach a consensus that its

Congress has so far been able to duck the issue because the
Obama administration can plausibly point to a number of authorities to
justify its actions to date in Iraq. Those responses have already included sending advanced
necessary.

weapons and roughly one thousand uniformed personnel to Iraq; conducting a humanitarian relief effort in the
Kurdish region; and launching limited air strikes against ISIS targets.

Every day that the crisis

deepens and U.S. military operations continue, the legal foundation

beneath the White Houses reactive policy weakens. When President Obama talks
about using military force in Iraq to protect U.S. personnel there, he is clearly invoking the commander in chiefs
power to defend American citizens and property enumerated in Article II of the Constitution. He is on squishier legal
ground even in unilaterally using U.S. military force to rescue ethnic minorities to avert a humanitarian
catastrophe, however, especially when such actions play out over months and are not authorized by Congress or
the United Nations Security Council. There are other authorities Obama could draw on to justify U.S. military action,
but both are problematic. Congresss 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against the terrorists responsible
for the 9/11 attacks has long been interpreted to allow military attacks against al-Qaida and associated forces. It
remains the justification for the administrations targeted-killing-by-drone program. But al-Qaida has famously
disenfranchised ISIS over its penchant for wantonly slaughtering fellow Muslims, and the Obama administration has
said it wants to reform and eventually repeal the 2001 AUMF. Even more problematic is Congress 2002
Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq. While still on the books, the 2002 AUMF is anathema for a
president who ran for office touting his opposition to the Iraq War, and Congresss vote that enabled it. When the
House of Representatives recently voted overwhelmingly to bar the administration from deploying military forces to
Iraq for a sustained combat role, the White House thus sought to pair that resolution with a full repeal of the 2002
AUMF. The congressional debate on a new authorization for military force should begin with an explanation of the

if oil from an
increasingly unstable Middle East were to stop flowing, it could trigger a
global recession. The credibility of the United States as a reliable partnermuch
questioned around the worldis also at stake. Not only does the United States still have a strategic
framework agreement with the government in Baghdad, but the disintegration of Iraq along
sectarian lines would directly threaten U.S. allies such as Jordan, Saudi
Arabia, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Persian Gulf states.
U.S. national interests involved. Despite talk of a looming U.S. energy independence,