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US bombs Syria

Cloth-Ears said:
Speculators can be wrong about one thing and right about another. And how do you know they "are the same people" ? Do you keep records / tabs on them ?

I'd still refer you and remind you about the previous gas incident which Kerry was using to trigger an assault and later turned out to be wrong.

We just do not know yet, about this. So many different possibilities but in the meantime, we can consider the logic of motivations. Beyond that I have no special knowledge, just a healthy suspicion about behaviours based on past history ( which we never seem to learn from )
Click to expand...

Which previous incident? Al Ghouta? Please share your conclusive evidence. The official UN report I saw a while back concluded the chemicals used came from the Syrian army stockpile.

Based on previous behaviours, suspicion of declarations by the Syrian would seem in order, too. For instance:
- sarin, apart from being extremely toxic, is unstable and has a short shelf life
- for that reason, it is usually stored in 2 separate components (2 compartments inside the munition, which then mix in flight), or it is manufactured close to the point of use from precursor components (the munitions are then filled by mobile filling units and used promptly). So it requires quite a bit of infrastructure and one would assume reasonably good processes (more complicated than other chemical weapons)
- bombing the components would destroy them without necessarily releasing sarin

This quite apart from any questions about how the rebels would have got hold of so much of the stuff, how they could have stored it for so long, why they would not have it used before (for instance during the siege of Aleppo), etc.
 
We don't even know its sarin yet, do we ?

It could be. It might even have been brought in there by say Turkey or Saudi Arabia. We don't know.

Yet another possibility is Assad's airforce facility had been infiltrated by a fifth column, who loaded up a gas bomb. Could have been. Unlikely, but more likely than Assad ordering it.
 
MSF, who treated some of the victims, think it's something like sarin:
https://www.msf.org.uk/article/syria-khan-sheikhoun-victims-have-symptoms-consistent-exposure-chemical-substances

"A Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctor Without Borders (MSF) medical team providing support to the emergency department of Bab Al Hawa hospital, in Syria’s Idlib province, has confirmed that patients’ symptoms are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas."

But they're just doctors, what do they know?
 
If they know its sarin its sarin

But youre assumptions about where it came from are probably wrong.

It well have been readied for release at the time of the attack. And your assumption about destruction by a bomb is not necessarily true, after all a bomb has to land somewhere therefore at its periphery of effect, pressure and heat is less and less. It could well have caused a release, rather than a total destruction. Or as I say, there is the possibility of deliberate manual release, locally, to coincide with the air attack. We just don't know.

Yet we DO know who gains and what the logic says. I go with that, until I see clear evidence to the contrary.
 
They report victims smelled of bleach, so chlorine involved, in addition.
 
I'd have no reason to doubt that either. If chlorine was present chlorine was present.

Put there by who or whether deliberately, is in contention.
 
I find it perplexing that many are quick to tear apart Trump at every turn- he's a moron, not to be trusted, tells flat out lies etc..

Then when something other than the rhetoric crops up, which happens to be very serious, his word is taken for what happened without barely a murmur.

It may well be the truth, but it's a bit late to be finding out when you've already pulled the trigger on a loaf of cruise missiles.
 
Consider the elements we know (sarin plus it would seem chlorine, released in large quantities exactly at the same time as an aerial attack by the Syrian Air Force on what looks like a built up area), plus constraints on the deployment of sarin already mentioned. The "accidental release" story seems less probable than the "brought to you by the Syrian Air Force" story.

This would place the much-trumpeted Russian intervention and subsequent agreement to remove and destroy 100% of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal under a bit of a cloud. How could one explain that the Syrians still have enough of the stuff to kill scores of civilians in a built-up area, after 21 out of 21 chemical weapons facilities have been destroyed officially? How could the aircraft be loaded with the stuff without the Russians on the base knowing about it?

No wonder the Russians are upset and pushing alternative stories as hard as they can.
 
Plus Robert Parry - an award-winning former AP journalist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Parry_(journalist) - says:

"But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.

One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.

The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus."

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/07/trumps-wag-the-dog-moment/
 
It seems that Russian air defence systems were turned off despite prior warning of the attack. Russian anti-aircraft missiles would have been quite capable of taking down at least some of the cruise missiles.
 
Retired Colonel W. Patrick Lang writes...

"Donald Trump's decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.
There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.
We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called "first responders" handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through "Live Agent" training at Fort McClellan in Alabama." http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_...ld-trump-is-an-international-law-breaker.html

Seems a credible source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Patrick_Lang

https://www.dpc.senate.gov/hearings/hearing23/bios.pdf "Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces. He served in the Department of Defense both as an officer and as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. Lang is a highly decorated veteran of several overseas conflicts, including the war in Vietnam. He was trained and educated as a Middle East specialist by the U.S. Army, and served in that region for many years. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he was the Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism, and later the first Director of the Defense Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Service. For his service in DIA, Lang was awarded the Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive. He is an analyst consultant for many television and radio broadcasts, among them the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
with Jim Lehrer. "
 
All seems a bit suspicious to me:

1. Trump bombs airbase and gets huge support at home and abroad

2. Russia threatens the US and escalates tensions

3. Trump negogiates and brings us back from the brink of WWW3

4. US & Russia now friends and all sanctions are lifted

(Trumps wee wee video gets put in the bin)
 
Not sure I buy #174.... it was very windy, sarin is volatile, contact with the skin isn't fatal... is this just deflection?
 
the speed of US response is the only thing that gives me concerns... almost too planned
 
Lead article in Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...n-645pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.971fdf3922c5

The only possible reaction appears to be, dream on. Russia likes its naval base and its customer for its arms (which it can see working (or not) in real-world situations). And it has made Russia a major player in the Middle East. It will relinquish none of those in a hurry. And the US trying to press it will only intensify its feeling that the US is seeking to prevent it from reclaiming what it sees as its rightful place as a major world power.
 
What America is doing in Syria is part of a religious and economic war they are continuing to wage in the Middle East.

A pipeline conflict is taking place. Robert F. Kennedy Jr writes here about America in Syria and the role that petrochemical corporations have played. Trump isn't simply out to save children with his attack on Syria and accusations against Russia.

The linked article doesn't deal directly with the latest attack, but is a long historical piece on Assad, ISIS, the CIA, various American Presidents and other factors. It gives a clear idea of the political, economic and religious environment that has given rise to Trump's actions.

"America's unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians—sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS ... "

It is wise to remember that Trump is a figurehead for Christian Fundamentalists. He was elected thanks to 4 in 5 white evangelicals, according to Gleanings.

Get down on your knees and pray that Trump doesn't use nuclear missiles in the Middle East or North Korea.

Jack
 
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