(the excerpt tag is really good for that)

They've wanted Syria for a long time so they're sending the al Qaeda forces in along with western intelligence. Syria is on the war roadmap to Iran. Obama is surrounded by Hillary, Biden, Kerry..all who voted for war, to let bush have war. He is surrounded by PNAC/CFR people and by the MIC that wants war always. And it looks like he'll grant their wishes.

The official voice of the US Government can NOT be trusted.
They have poisoned that well so many times over the last 60 years that only a fool would drink for it now.

Same Shit
Different Bag


They are evil dictators who kill their own people !
If you're not FOR the WAR in
Vietnam
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
[size=3] Syria,[/font]

you're WITH
The Communists
AlQaeda
The Terrorists
Saddam
Qaddafi
[font size=3] Assad

Terror! Terror! Terror!
Evil Dictators! Booga...Booga
USA....USA...USA
[/font]

from slaughter in Rwanda? I was pissed that we made excuses not to help those people.

Do you disbelieve the story of these innocents in Syria?


Edited for clarity

Do you believe we should have gone to war with Iraq, then? I do not...and I don't believe we should go to war in Syria, either.

I personally believe we should have some covert way of dealing with these murdering monsters.

How do you feel about how we were so hands off in Rwanda?

My feelings are complex. I believe the US and the old Colonial powers should spend more time taking care of our own people and less time stirring up other nations. I don't have a problem with sending in no-strings humanitarian aid but we're always eying resources and backing factions.

The situation in Rwanda traces back to Belgium occupation.

You can sum up my beliefs as "Yankee Stay Home" and "Yankee Go Home". When it comes to covert ways of murdering monsters, I'll agree with that only if we start with ours first, and our allies' monsters first too. Good house-keeping begins at home.

Thanks for your answer.

It's hard to tell on a message board but I really thank you.

but I remember how upsetting it was to find out what happened to innocent citizens that were hacked to death by their neighbors. I don't ever want to feel that way again.

I have always trusted John Kerry and admired his wisdom. I think he would have made a good president. I'm just not willing to dismiss what he says today about this genocide.

I also don't believe we need covert action to take out other Americans...we have American ways of doing those things. We just need to get busy about convincing people of every political stripe to do the right, humane things. We need to change hearts, not stop them.

I think we are almost as far apart as you originally thought, but I respect your view, even though I don't agree with it.

Just my two cents. Have a good one, Catherina!

And no one disbelieves that if we had an armed rebellion in America that those armed rebels would be vanquished, civilians be damned.

My bet is on some Cheney cronies somewhere. They want nuclear confrontation. Mo' money, mo' money.

I'm just not believing this conspiracy theory.

They want higher gas prices! Stirring up the Middle east pot every year or so does that!

And what do you mean did it to themselves? As far as I understand it, is was civilians who suffered and died in this attack. Though that's another thing we don't really know- who precisely the victims were.

I don't know who did it. That's the point. And no, I don't trust our intelligence community. they fucked us wildly on Iraq. Why should I take what they say as gospel?

who did this, as many from DU feel. It's certainly fashionable to distrust all things "govt" these days.

And I believe the rebels are fighting in support of the citizenry, so it's not really believable to me that the rebels would mass murder the citizens that they're fighting for.

It's not believable to me that John Kerry and Barack Obama are war hawks.

I'm aghast at your comment. simply aghast.

Look, the history of the intelligence agencies is one rife with abuses under republicans and dems alike. Intelligence agencies don't change much from one admin to another and you'd be hard pressed to find any expert who claims any such thing, dear.

It has jackshit to do with fashion and a lot more to do with that I know history and I know how to do research in that field.


by the way, you know nothing about the "rebels" either. EVERY expert has stated that they are comprised of widely divergent groups.
for instance, Jabhat-al-Nusra is connected to Al-Qaeda and has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. They are a big piece in this. they've committed many, many documented atrocities. In fact, one thing is definitive: atrocities have been committed by all sides.

You just don't know very much.

And for the record, I don't think they're war hawks either, but I do think they got boxed in by their own "red lines".

giving in now without knowing for certain what the situation is? Kerry is far more likely to side with weapon inspectors' analysis than any artificial, gung ho push for war.

or read what he said.

I'm sorry, but you are blind when it comes to Kerry. Completely and utterly so.

Kerry wouldn't be doing this without it being a last resort.

Can YOU name anyone who did more to PREVENT war with Syria the last 8 years, cali? Try. You sure as hell weren't supporting his efforts to avoid war. You sure as hell weren't defending him when all of establishment DC was mocking him and angry at his interference.

Try doing some research starting back in 2005 and you'll see just ONE person who stuck his neck out and interfered with the war plans - war plans that were being supported by establishment Dems including the Clintons.

You were premature in your finger pointing - you can't admit that you were clueless about what has been going on for the last 8 years in Syria, and you think trying to catch up now based only on recent reports is enough to make you competent enough to attack Kerry.

it's not at all shocking.

Do you even grasp the most basic stuff here, blm? Do you know who the different factions are in the rebel opposition? Do you get that Jabhat al Nusra is affiliated with A-Q?

It's disgusting that you think this is all about your idol, John Kerry.

if you think this is just about Kerry for me - it's about KNOWING what extraordinary efforts he put into keeping war FROM happening the last 8 years. YOU refuse to acknowledge that war in Syria was close to occurring back in 2005 and that only NE person did the heavy lifting the last 8 years to PREVENT it from happening - the same person you are attacking and blaming and smearing now as if he is cooking the intel books no differently than Bush did to invade Iraq.

If military force is used in Syria, it will be because it is a LAST RESORT, not cooked intel.

You're dug in and reacting childishly.

Too many people are using old paradigms to define new scenarios--it's not apt, certainly.

The attempts here to try to paint Kerry as some kind of Bush-ish warmongering, profiteering type are just absurd. There couldn't possibly be a clearer distinction between Kerry's beliefs and motivations, and those of the Bushies....

in the same category as the last admin. That is, indeed, willfully foolish.



But, hey...you are certainly entitled to your opinion! I guess that you would agree that I'm entitled to mine...and I feel pretty strongly in standing up against genocide.

that we should ignore genocide like we did in Rwanda?

why not say that Europe has been fucked up for over a thousand years? Or that the world has been fucked up for all of recorded history?

We don't know who did it, but yes, I question intervention even if it's Assad. Will we kill more people than we save? Will we set off a larger regional conflagration? Will Iran become involved? Will H'zbollah attack Israel? What will Iran do? Russia?

I'll tell you one thing that is true: Our intervention in the Middle East is a very unhappy history, from the U.S. deposing Mosaddegh in 1952 to Iraq and beyond. It has led to great instability and horrific violence.

like that was an excuse to keep us from helping stem that genocide.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter how long things have been fucked up. We fucked up not helping those people in Rwanda. I would hate to feel like another democratic president did nothing to help when presented with a genocidal situation.

War? No. But let's not just wash our hands of the human suffering of Syria.

read Dalaire's book.

We don't have to wash our hands of it, but we don't have to intervene militarily either.

and I would hate for the booosh admin and their lying to keep us from fighting for human rights when human rights are being violated.

Again, war is not an option, but there are miles and miles between war and doing nothing. Thinking out of the box will be necessary, imho.

I always feel : let them solve their own problems and hatreds . We cannot save all the world from their foolishness .

But it's actually flounder.

but Kerry says it was absolutely the Assad regime. That's just about the biggest line of horse shit I have ever seen. What the fuck.

So who delivered them? Santa?

Nor that it was delivered by rocket. It's all speculation. You also don't know if western intelligence is helping the al Qaeda rebels have that capability.

They don't have that capability, and why would you think they'd poison themselves? There were rebels IN those neighborhoods, hiding amongst the civilian population.

and the rebels evidently do have sarin and used it in May of this year according to the U.N.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505

furthermore, we don't know the delivery system.

fog of war mean anything at all to you?

but are kind of wishywashy about it.

to me until you just said it. I meant the off to war playbook. Look, I do think the military/industrial complex is a big factor. Did you know that over the last 4 years, the U.S., by far the largest arms dealer in the world, has doubled its exports of arms?

You can keep dimly parroting PNAC over and over but that's not correct. And it's not analysis or critical thinking either. You don't seem big on either.

Apparently many of you were unaware of this push for war in Syria that has been going on since 2005.


Bill Clinton diary entry:

FRIDAY, MARCH 04, 2005

I can't sleep
I can’t sleep. I took two sleeping pills. They didn’t work. I can’t take any more, because I’m also using heart medicine. I tried playing internet poker, but I can’t focus. Right now there is nothing I can do. I have to wait till after the speech, which is at about lunch time here on the West coast. After that I have the meeting with the former police officer.

There is something I wanted to say a long time ago, but I didn’t have the time, because of my visit to Asia.

I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of my close friend and former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. His death was a shock to me. I was horrified. I know exactly who did it and why. More about that later.

I called his family to tell them how shocked I was. I wanted to be present at the funeral, but the secret service vetoed that idea. It wasn’t safe, especially not with Hezbollah still armed to the teeth.

Mr. Hariri, lovingly called Mr. Lebanon by his fellow countrymen, was the driving force behind the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. Lately he was also the driving force behind the movement to ask the Syrian government to pull its soldiers and secret service agents out of Lebanon.

That’s the reason the Syrians killed him. If Syria has to pull out of Lebanon, it will be pretty much encircled by enemy states. NATO member Turkey to the north, American troops in Iraq to the East, pro-American Jordan to the south (By the way Syria is occupying a large amount of Jordanian land, which King Abdullah wants back) and Israel to the south west.

The Syrian government killed Rafiq Hariri, because they are afraid that Lebanon would not just be sovereign if they pulled out their forces, but might in time be dominated by another power, be it Israel or the US, which is more likely.

Another reason is strategic depth. The capital of Syria is just a few miles from the border of Lebanon. And also just a few miles away from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Which is probably the reason Israel chose to occupy the Golan Heights. Standing on the mountains of the Golan Heights you can see Damascus in the distance. The Syrians know this. It’s a great deterrent against any Syrian adventurism.

This is the reason the Syrian government always uses the Hezbollah, a Lebanese group to attack Israel instead of attacking Israel itself.

Aside from a national defense dimension there is also the economic dimension. Syria has a hybrid half communist, half capitalist economic system. Syria is bankrupt and has been ever since the end of the Soviet Union. Without the economic power of Lebanon, Syria will fall apart economically.

Syria is also under economic sanctions by the US. Lebanon isn’t, so products Syria needs are bought by Lebanon, then transferred to Syria. There are also one million Syrians working in Lebanon. If they have to go back to Syria, Syria will see a lot of social problems with these unemployed young men.

In other words, without Lebanon, Syria will be boxed in from a military point of view and an economic point of view. Syria without Lebanon would be weak and exposed.

From the Syrian’s point of view Rafiq Hariri had to die, because he wanted them to leave. And he as a billionaire had the clout to gather international support for this idea. He was the one who asked the US and France to support United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls upon Syria to leave Lebanon.

Some US commentators say the Hariri murder might have been organized by Syria’s old guard without the knowledge of Syria’s young, inexperienced president Bashar Assad. This is an old myth dictators create to deflect responsibility.

Go back into history and you will see texts in old Roman books saying, the emperor had raised taxes for instance and the population, who didn’t want or dare attack the emperor for his mistake, they would say the emperor’s underlings had made the mistake without the emperor knowing.

I read books in which Germans, whose family members had been hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazi’s, said “If only Herr Hitler knew about this situation, he’d do something about it”. Well Herr Hitler knew about it and had actually ordered it.

It’s an old trick. The dictator can make mistakes and deflects taking responsibility by giving the impression he isn’t his own man and the population can criticize the dictator’s policies without criticizing him personally.

Bashar Assad ordered the death of Rafiq Hariri. Bashar Assad is in control of Syria.

People in the media should stop making up infantile excuses by saying the real power behind Bashar Assad killed Hariri. Assad is the power.

There are also people, who think you need to give Bashar Assad incentives to behave more responsibly, to make him stop supporting terrorists in Lebanon and Israel. This is nonsense. It took me almost eight years to understand that our way of thinking is not their way of thinking. Their way, I mean a country’s dictator’s way of thinking.

A dictator wants to stay in power. That’s all. A dictator doesn’t care about his population, war, peace. He only wants to stay in power. Everything else is negotiable.

You have to understand the Syrian tyranny. Syria’s president Bashar Assad belongs to a minority religious sect called the Alawis, a sub-group of Islam. The top government and army officials belong to the same sect, which only 10 percent of Syria belongs to. In other words 10 percent of the population is lording over the 80 percent of Syrians, who are Sunni Muslims.

Syria can not be a normal country, because that would mean, the minority Alawis giving up power to the vast majority of Sunnis. This is the reason, why Syria has to be always in a state of turmoil if Bashar Assad and his cronies want to stay in power.

As long as there is an external enemy, like Israel occupying the Golan Heights, as long as there is Turkey “occupying” according to Syria the province of Hatay, the Biblical Antioch, there are external enemies, which focus the majority populations’ attention on these external enemies.

Were these external enemies to disappear, the majority would have the time to consider their own plight. That is a dictator’s worst nightmare, because thinking about a problem and thinking about ways to solve the problem are very closely connected. This is the reason a minority government like Bashar Assad’s Syrian dictatorship needs chaos and turmoil to exist. It doesn’t want peace with its neighbors. It doesn’t want its people to be prosperous and content and have time to think about their situation.

The only way to stop Syria from being a constant threat and stop them from spreading chaos is to topple the minority government of Bashar Assad and let the majority of Syrians rule.

President Bush did this in Iraq and now that the majority Shia are in power, Iraq is looking inwards, trying to make the lives of its people better. That is what democracies do, they look inward instead of threatening their neighbors, the United States or Israel or the oil supply and with that the world economy. Majority rule means peace. Minority rule, like Bashar Assad’s dictatorship means chaos, terrorism and war.
POSTED BY BILL CLINTON AT 7:43 AM

so what?

It appears to me that Obama boxed himself in with the clear red line rhetoric.

and the criticisms from everyone, including a blistering critique from Clinton last June. I highly doubt he's putting the push for war ahead of whatever the UN weapon inspectors will have to say.

But, back to the push for war - Many here at DU don't remember back in 2005 when we almost ended up in Syria, and but for the Downing Street Memos and there proof that Bush lied us into invading Iraq, no countries were eager to join him.

Bill Clinton diary entry:

FRIDAY, MARCH 04, 2005

I can't sleep
I can’t sleep. I took two sleeping pills. They didn’t work. I can’t take any more, because I’m also using heart medicine. I tried playing internet poker, but I can’t focus. Right now there is nothing I can do. I have to wait till after the speech, which is at about lunch time here on the West coast. After that I have the meeting with the former police officer.

There is something I wanted to say a long time ago, but I didn’t have the time, because of my visit to Asia.

I would like to offer my deepest condolences to the family of my close friend and former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. His death was a shock to me. I was horrified. I know exactly who did it and why. More about that later.

I called his family to tell them how shocked I was. I wanted to be present at the funeral, but the secret service vetoed that idea. It wasn’t safe, especially not with Hezbollah still armed to the teeth.

Mr. Hariri, lovingly called Mr. Lebanon by his fellow countrymen, was the driving force behind the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war. Lately he was also the driving force behind the movement to ask the Syrian government to pull its soldiers and secret service agents out of Lebanon.

That’s the reason the Syrians killed him. If Syria has to pull out of Lebanon, it will be pretty much encircled by enemy states. NATO member Turkey to the north, American troops in Iraq to the East, pro-American Jordan to the south (By the way Syria is occupying a large amount of Jordanian land, which King Abdullah wants back) and Israel to the south west.

The Syrian government killed Rafiq Hariri, because they are afraid that Lebanon would not just be sovereign if they pulled out their forces, but might in time be dominated by another power, be it Israel or the US, which is more likely.

Another reason is strategic depth. The capital of Syria is just a few miles from the border of Lebanon. And also just a few miles away from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Which is probably the reason Israel chose to occupy the Golan Heights. Standing on the mountains of the Golan Heights you can see Damascus in the distance. The Syrians know this. It’s a great deterrent against any Syrian adventurism.

This is the reason the Syrian government always uses the Hezbollah, a Lebanese group to attack Israel instead of attacking Israel itself.

Aside from a national defense dimension there is also the economic dimension. Syria has a hybrid half communist, half capitalist economic system. Syria is bankrupt and has been ever since the end of the Soviet Union. Without the economic power of Lebanon, Syria will fall apart economically.

Syria is also under economic sanctions by the US. Lebanon isn’t, so products Syria needs are bought by Lebanon, then transferred to Syria. There are also one million Syrians working in Lebanon. If they have to go back to Syria, Syria will see a lot of social problems with these unemployed young men.

In other words, without Lebanon, Syria will be boxed in from a military point of view and an economic point of view. Syria without Lebanon would be weak and exposed.

From the Syrian’s point of view Rafiq Hariri had to die, because he wanted them to leave. And he as a billionaire had the clout to gather international support for this idea. He was the one who asked the US and France to support United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls upon Syria to leave Lebanon.

Some US commentators say the Hariri murder might have been organized by Syria’s old guard without the knowledge of Syria’s young, inexperienced president Bashar Assad. This is an old myth dictators create to deflect responsibility.

Go back into history and you will see texts in old Roman books saying, the emperor had raised taxes for instance and the population, who didn’t want or dare attack the emperor for his mistake, they would say the emperor’s underlings had made the mistake without the emperor knowing.

I read books in which Germans, whose family members had been hauled off to concentration camps by the Nazi’s, said “If only Herr Hitler knew about this situation, he’d do something about it”. Well Herr Hitler knew about it and had actually ordered it.

It’s an old trick. The dictator can make mistakes and deflects taking responsibility by giving the impression he isn’t his own man and the population can criticize the dictator’s policies without criticizing him personally.

Bashar Assad ordered the death of Rafiq Hariri. Bashar Assad is in control of Syria.

People in the media should stop making up infantile excuses by saying the real power behind Bashar Assad killed Hariri. Assad is the power.

There are also people, who think you need to give Bashar Assad incentives to behave more responsibly, to make him stop supporting terrorists in Lebanon and Israel. This is nonsense. It took me almost eight years to understand that our way of thinking is not their way of thinking. Their way, I mean a country’s dictator’s way of thinking.

A dictator wants to stay in power. That’s all. A dictator doesn’t care about his population, war, peace. He only wants to stay in power. Everything else is negotiable.

You have to understand the Syrian tyranny. Syria’s president Bashar Assad belongs to a minority religious sect called the Alawis, a sub-group of Islam. The top government and army officials belong to the same sect, which only 10 percent of Syria belongs to. In other words 10 percent of the population is lording over the 80 percent of Syrians, who are Sunni Muslims.

Syria can not be a normal country, because that would mean, the minority Alawis giving up power to the vast majority of Sunnis. This is the reason, why Syria has to be always in a state of turmoil if Bashar Assad and his cronies want to stay in power.

As long as there is an external enemy, like Israel occupying the Golan Heights, as long as there is Turkey “occupying” according to Syria the province of Hatay, the Biblical Antioch, there are external enemies, which focus the majority populations’ attention on these external enemies.

Were these external enemies to disappear, the majority would have the time to consider their own plight. That is a dictator’s worst nightmare, because thinking about a problem and thinking about ways to solve the problem are very closely connected. This is the reason a minority government like Bashar Assad’s Syrian dictatorship needs chaos and turmoil to exist. It doesn’t want peace with its neighbors. It doesn’t want its people to be prosperous and content and have time to think about their situation.

The only way to stop Syria from being a constant threat and stop them from spreading chaos is to topple the minority government of Bashar Assad and let the majority of Syrians rule.

President Bush did this in Iraq and now that the majority Shia are in power, Iraq is looking inwards, trying to make the lives of its people better. That is what democracies do, they look inward instead of threatening their neighbors, the United States or Israel or the oil supply and with that the world economy. Majority rule means peace. Minority rule, like Bashar Assad’s dictatorship means chaos, terrorism and war.
POSTED BY BILL CLINTON AT 7:43 AM

It's a dispersant warhead, as opposed to an explosive one. They were launched in concert with explosive weaponry to break windows to circulate the gas through apartments and kill the sleeping victims in their beds. The pieces of them were slammed into the ground, with residue remaining on them. All that shelling didn't destroy them.

I am not about to throw down and deny that the rebels could NEVER have used CWs, or never behaved brutally (I am not "rooting" for the rebels--that civil war is Syria's to fight)-- of course it's entirely possible, they aren't saints in this equation (two wrongs, and all that)--but I invite your attention to the link you provided as "proof." The word "suspicion" is about as good as that investigator could get and the chairman walked back that assertion in June. And note that Ms. del Ponte didn't say a WORD about dead people. In this recent incident, they were lined up like fallen trees as far as the eye could see and there is video evidence of that.

So the army moved the chemical, moved the missiles, set up the delivery system, fill the rockets, fire them and kill over a thousand people with 20 rockets?

Sarin is heavier then air so it would fall to the lowest part of the topography, you also need to come into a decent amount of it for it to kill you, if not you just get sick and it is a short lived threat so it's lethality is quickly diminished.

CDC page about Sarin Gas:

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/sarin/basics/facts.asp

And they did this all right when the UN inspectors where on the ground.

The gas floats down over the neighborhood, which has already been pocked by conventional ordnance. People die in their beds. Those that don't die, but feel ill, and run downstairs to head for medical help, walk through that "low lying" sarin and die from that.

We aren't talking about homes on one acre lots, we're talking dense apartment buildings, many with broken windows.

The UN inspectors were not there for the purpose of investigating this issue. They were there on a scheduled visit. They were also constrained from going anywhere until the UN SG's envoy read the government the riot act. It's not like they had the ability to move freely. Even at that, they got shot at on their way to the neighborhood where the attack took place.

weapons on a few people. He may be evil but he's not stupid. Something is fishy here.

Also, many of these teams, particularly the ones that are on pre-arranged visits (which these guys were) don't kill themselves doing their job.

Everyone is so busy dithering along the lines of "Criticizing and sanctioning al-Assad means that you support the opposition" but that's not necessarily the case. All it means is that there's an objection to the use of chemical weapons to kill thousands. I think plenty of people think "They're ALL assholes!!!" but the biggest losers are the ones who decide to poison people--we just can't have that.

Significantly, this attack was a bit more successful than I think al-Assad's generals thought it would be--probably due to all the softening up via conventional means to put holes in buildings so that the poison circulated more readily. And they just might have gotten lucky with the wind and their aim.

They weren't planning on letting the UN team go to that neighborhood, but the Secretary General sent an envoy to Syria to lay down the law (as it were). It's the biggest finger wag he could deliver short of going there himself. Even at that, al Assad stalled them for as long as he could, hoping that the evidence would degrade. He didn't count on those Doctors w/o Borders collecting all that physical evidence, perhaps, and he didn't realize that so many people would be Johnny on the Spot with their video phones.

of the worst kind.

link for that?

The UN inspectors who did NOT find reason for Bush to invade Iraq are in Syria now. We don't know what they are reporting back, yet. It's likely that Obama and Kerry will have heard their discoveries before we do.

and then the politicians can start in on assigning blame.

and the remains of rockets containing neurotoxins that were deployed while the Syrian army shelled the shit out of those neighborhoods.

The shelling breaks the windows so the gas kills the innocents in their beds.

This evidence is overwhelming. The bodies stacked like cordwood is the first clue.

See the blue "UN" helmet? They are the ones gathering the evidence, collecting the eyewitness statements, getting the biological samples from the doctors...and then there's the dead.

of the Balkans. So NATO had to pick up the ball since the UN would not. Perhaps we will see a repeat of that but I hope not. Lets save the billions we would spend on a new war and spend it here at home instead. Even if we don't put boots on the ground a prolonged bombing campaign would cost billions and of course the good old USA would be left with picking up most of the tab.

Who is still in their bed once the conventional shelling begins? Not trying to downplay the innocent lives lost but your trying to drum up emotions with speculation. Don't buy it from Kerry or you.

Shell, stop for a day or two, people relax, gas.

You are in an apartment that has no basement--what is the "basement" is where the poops go in typical construction over that way, and there's no way to get to it.

Run out to the street and you run the risk of getting bombed, or stay put and cross your fingers and hope for the best?

And of course, if you run down the stairs to the street, that sarin will pool around you....aaaacccck!

There's no justification for use of chemical weapons--that's why the cw treaty protocol is a codicil to the Geneva Conventions.

Even the Russians say that the only "rocket" capability that the rebels have are "home made" ones. These sorts of weapons don't have the capability to disperse their poison in the air before slamming into the ground. Rockets that go boom, like in the video you have offered, are explosive--the rockets the Syrian Army used that were full of poison landed and remained somewhat intact, having deployed their contents.


Those rockets loaded with CW were interdispersed with conventional shells (to break windows so the gas would circulate) and those conventional shells were coming from the Syrian Army. The victims of this gas were not just civilians, but opposition fighters as well.

The amount of CW required to kill a thousand people is enormous. There's no way that amount could be manufactured "in tunnels" like the Syrians claimed, which was a change in their original story, which was that they claimed that there were no chemical weapons at all used in their attack on that neighborhood, and then they changed their minds and said that "Oh wait, there were chemical weapons coincidentally deployed while we were shelling the shit out of that neighborhood late at night while everyone slept in a surprise attack--but we didn't do it, those OTHER guys did--they just happened to coordinate their attack with ours!"

It defies credulity to try to insist that al Assad didn't do this. He did do it, and it's not the first time, either.

Did you even read that last link you provided? It doesn't make your case at all.

It happened at night so nobody could see rockets or bombs falling. Conveniently, the area has been heavily bombed so evidence will be difficult to come by. But if the rebels did do it, I'm sure they would scatter rocket parts from other attacks in the area to point at the Assad regime. I highly doubt the government would use chemical weapons so close to their seat of power in Damascus.

They have eyewitness testimony, they have video evidence, they have hundreds of bodies, they have blood, urine and hair clipping evidence.

Of course they'd use the weapons close to home--they're very personal, you know, particularly when there's not much wind. They dissipate quickly. The military shelled conventionally first to break the windows so the poison would circulate. The amount of CW needed to kill this number of people is not small and could not be manufactured in an ad hoc fashion with home-made materials--this was al Assad's doing.

They needed to stop their enemy from targeting their strategic and tactical assets from that neighborhood. Their enemy was hiding behind women and children, interwoven with families, as is common in that part of the world.

Even Russia and Iran are admitting that chemical weapons were used. It's really not debatable at this point in time.

Professor Ake Sellstrom, the man leading a team of UN inspectors in Syria, is not the first Swede to be given the job of investigating the use chemical weapons in the Middle East.

Following in the footsteps of Hans Blix – who searched for Saddam Hussein’s ultimately non-existent weapons of mass destruction in 2003 – Professor Sellstrom has been sent on a “fact-finding” mission to three locations in Syria.


Professor Sellstrom, who has held several high-profile roles within the UN, was the chief inspector of Unscom, the special commission set up after the Gulf War in the early 1990s to determine whether chemical weapons were used during that conflict..



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/profile-professor-ake-sellstrom-un-team-leader-8780975.html

I just hope this isn't a repeat of the Hans Blix fiasco where Bush essentially said screw it...we're not waiting. I would hope Obama won't listen to the hawks and lets the inspectors do their search and report what they know.

Also briefing right now: White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Q: What would the legal basis be for a military strike?

A: I'm not going to speculate about a decision that hasn't been made.

but, it's good to know that they are seeming to do their JOB this time...

it can be established beyond a shadow of a doubt that Assad gassed innocent civilians? I will admit to being all over the map on this; with feelings ranging from "Damn it, we've been the world's cop for long enough" to "A certain responsibility accrues to being the most powerful nation on Earth". I am no-shit conflicted here, and would appreciate a few other viewpoints.

Let a coalition do overflights to protect them, get rebels and Assad regime to suspend hostilities in the Blue Helmet area while they execute their mission.

That would be the optimal solution.

The more likely solution is that they'll hit the caches with a cruise missile, or with aviation weaponry from a stand-off point outside the borders of Syria.

You're either onboard with the Chemical Weapons Treaty protocol, or you're not. I mean, that's really what this is all about. I support upholding the CW Treaty, which is an addendum to the Geneva Accords.

Your logic suggests the US isn't capable of doing such nefarious things now. I beg to differ. Our track record speaks differently.
Hell we just gave Bush a free pass for Iraq and have been found to be bugging the UN and all of our allies plus our own citizens. I think we are more than capable of nefarious doings.

Obama's track record is of drawing down, of getting OUT of wars the Chimp started. Ignore that small detail, though, because it doesn't match your doom/gloom outlook.

But hey--ignore all that--you're too invested in an "All Americans Are Baaaaaad" mentality, I guess...?

I hope like hell we were bugging the fucking Syrian Army--that would be some useful audio...

who may have a conflict in the future? Because Obama doesn't seem to be drawing down on the international wiretapping. As more news comes to light that practice seems to be escalating. I guess we're entitled to bug neighbors though as we are the benevolent American do good world wide police who would never ever deceive anyone for our own benefit! Syria is 7000 miles away and has nothing to do with you and me. And if we were so full of love for humanity why didn't we do anything during the Rwandan genocide? The only time we go into any country is if it suits our national interests. That is pragmatic realism. Not naive optimism wrapped in a flag.

Do you want to be the only one at the tennis match without a racquet?

Are you so naive that you believe that China will pack up PLA Unit 61398 and call it a day? You seriously think Pootie will close up his shops and stop doing the very same damn thing we're doing? I've a bridge for sale, if you believe that.

Syria has very much to do with me, so don't make assumptions not in evidence. It used to be in my neighborhood; I have Syrian friends. And last time I checked, I observed that I was a member of the human race, and I really don't like seeing my fellow humans poisoned like cockroaches.

I guess, in that regard, anyway, I am a lot like the socialist President of France. Funny, I don't see him leaping to associate himself with America, but in this case, he's d'accord. He has a major problem with al-Assad's conduct, too, and he advocates a vigorous response.

And he most certainly hasn't wrapped himself in any 'flag'--France's or America's--he just has the basic decency to object to wholesale slaughter.

In sum, his "pragmatic interests"-- like ours -- are that you don't stand by while innocent human beings from children to the elderly are massacred wholesale by the hundreds, if not thousands. It's called basic human decency, and without it, you become "less than."

would like Europe to be getting its oil from someone other than the Russians?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-130813.html

These countries don't care about UN treaties. Hell we're the ones that break them the most. They certainly don't care weather your friends or neighbors were gassed. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/26/cia-documents-show-u-s-helped-iraq-fight-iran-despite-chemical-weapons-use/

Yet your advocating that we Americans spend our hard earned dollars and give up our lives to go there. If your so for it why not go fight it yourself?

Certainly not from me!

Come on--explain yourself. You don't get away with making purely bullshit remarks like that without a challenge.

I can't believe so many people here don't pay attention to the news...!

to the point of US troops being involved is what your getting at? Certainly the possibly exists regardless of what pundits say. Look at what happened in Serbia with British and NATO forces nearly starting WW3 with the Russians. The possibility always exists.

that our "news" has been fucked for the last two decades and now just passes as propaganda/opinion? It was our corrupt "news" that led the charge for war in Iraq and we all know what happened there. Hell, CNN's lead story yesterday was Miley Cyrus's dance moves.

You can--like I do--look at news reports from around the globe.

If you are relying on "our fucked up news" then this is YOUR fault. You can't throw out that excuse and get away with it here.

The internet is a helluva thing, you know.

Miley Cyrus may have been YOUR lead story, but when I look at CNN, I look at CNN International from a SW Asian or European perspective.

You're the captain of your own "news" ship--sail where you will.

I mentioned what passes for news in the US after "you" asked if I paid attention to news. However my main news sources are well read. 1) The Guardian, 2) Der Spiegel, 3) Asia Times Online, 4) The Independent 5) Reuters, 6) Al Jazeera, 7) Janes Defense Weekly,8) The Economist, 9) Live Leak for War footage 10) Le Monde amongst others... US "news" is good for comedy. I go to the Daily Show for proper reporting ironically.

Your over reaching reactionary remarks about me instead of the issue at hand speak more loudly than your boisterous posts.

I asked you if you paid attention, yes, and you --in response to my query-- started crying about Miley Cyrus on CNN.

By your very own remarks you led me to believe that finding viable sources of news presented you with difficulties, which is why I asked if your computer was broken.

If you don't want people to think you have a problem, don't act like you're having one.

We're taking the baseball bat, the pea shooter, the slingshot and the bicycle chain away from the local bully.

The idea is to remove al Assad's capability to kill little children and old people.

In Serbia, we had "boots on the ground." There are no boots, no troops, no nada.

We're bombing STUFF, not people.

I didn't realize you had a fucking TELESCOPE INTO THE FUTURE!

it will be very difficult to prove that. Secondly, I don't trust the U.S. Intelligence services. Recent history has taught us that we shouldn't.

And that no one in Washington wants the P.R. nightmare of the potential of American casualties in another Middle East nation (backed by Russia, no less), along with the fat price tag that comes along with it...

Not to mention that like Egypt, there are probably multiple "sides" among the rebel forces, and the U.S. won't be going through all this trouble unless they have assurances that the "right" people will be in power when all the dust settles...

I think ultimately the U.S. will keep their assistance under-the-radar and just sit back providing cash/resources/intel/logistics...

If you are going to bomb the crap out of one side for using CW then shouldn't you also be prepared to do the same to the other side also?

Sad to see a great man reduced to this kind of thing. WTF was he going on about, and someone needs to explain to me how killing more kids, and women, and innocent people, with our missiles and bombs (because that will inevitably happen) is making things morally better.

and I wondered if he'd seen the videos of our Drones and Bombs results in Afghanistan Yemen and South Africa. I wondered if he caught any of the photos from Iraq of women, children...whole families?

"...give me some flames...some sound of screaming..."