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Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria


Hugo Stiglitz

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"So, let's get this straight; the Syrian government has liberated about 90 percent of the aforementioned territory, has overwhelming military superiority, is currently negotiating with many of the terrorist groups in the region, but has used chemical weapons, a move which could provoke western intervention?

The original source was Jaish Al Islam, a Saudi backed Salafi terrorist group."

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Imgur will never work for Surly. They say we were in violation of some hotlinking policy. It on the board discussion. We'll have to use a third party to host the pictures first from now on.

We need a PSA on this since maybe people need to know throughout Surly that this is the deal now.

Some of us are olds who need to figure out the added step/steps to getting  stuff on here. Oh and FUCK Kevin Morgan!

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1 minute ago, burntorangebongos said:

Imgur will never work for Surly. They say we were in violation of some hotlinking policy. It on the board discussion. We'll have to use a third party to host the pictures first from now on.

We need a PSA on this since maybe people need to know throughout Surly that this is the deal now.

Some of us are olds who need to figure out the added step/steps to getting  stuff on here. Oh and FUCK Kevin Morgan!

I just used tinypic instead, seems to work

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Israeli aircraft carried out an attack on an airbase in Syria early Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said, shifting suspicion away from the U.S. after President Donald Trump vowed retaliation for a reported chemical weapons attack.

 
 

Israel, which has targeted arms convoys in Syria dozens of times, had no comment, as is its custom. While Israel has maintained a policy of largely staying out of the civil war that’s been raging on its northern frontier, it has claimed the right to take action against activities by Iran and its proxies that threaten its security.

 
 

Russia said two Israeli planes attacked the Al Tiyas, or T-4, military base from Lebanese airspace before dawn. Three missiles hit their targets and five others were shot down by Syrian forces, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. Russia’s military is backing the Syrian government and helped turn the tide of war in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.

 
 
 

Syria’s official Sana news agency said eight missiles were intercepted, adding there were casualties. At least 14 people, including Iranians, were killed in the attack, Sky News Arabia reporting, citing the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

 
 

The T-4 base is the same facility the Israeli military said Iran used on Feb. 10 to launch a drone that penetrated Israeli air space. At that time, Israel said Iran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force “for some time have been operating the T-4 Air Base in Syria next to Palmyra, with support from the Syrian military and with permission from the Syrian regime,” the Times of Israel website reported.

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1 hour ago, Fozzz said:

So ISIS began advancing in Homs immediately after Israel's airstrike.  I guess Israel is now acting as ISIS' Condor Legion.  

This is an interesting dynamic that hasn’t got much attention.  Israel hasn’t really gone after ISIS targets.  Not sure what the calculation here is but it is noteworthy.

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You know we are going to attack Syria. Too many people are making noise about Trump saying we’d pull out and then Assad did this, and they are saying Assad doesn’t fear Trump. 

The only question is what targets has Ivanka selected, and what the Saudis have asked Jared to bomb. 

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Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This is an interesting dynamic that hasn’t got much attention.  Israel hasn’t really gone after ISIS targets.  Not sure what the calculation here is but it is noteworthy.

 Why would Israel expend their resources playing whack-a-mole in the desert when they can just pass Intel on to us or even to other countries?

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Hopefully Trump just takes out Assad’s aircraft with air strikes and sanctions the piss out him.  

Syria is the most complicated geopolitical situation I’ve ever seen.  The challenge for the U.S. is coming up with a clearly defined objective/policy.

 

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4 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 Why would Israel expend their resources playing whack-a-mole in the desert when they can just pass Intel on to us or even to other countries?

The word on the street is ISIS and Israel have aligning interests as it relates to Iran and their forces in Syria.  

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11 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 Why would Israel expend their resources playing whack-a-mole in the desert when they can just pass Intel on to us or even to other countries?

Why would Israel pass on intel to us, when Trump has already given Israeli intel to the Russians in that oval office meeting?

 

8 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Hopefully Trump just takes out Assad’s aircraft with air strikes and sanctions the piss out him.  

Syria is the most complicated geopolitical situation I’ve ever seen.  The challenge for the U.S. is coming up with a clearly defined objective/policy.

 

So of course, it will be solved by John Bolton and Jared.  And maybe Putin.  

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7 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The word on the street is ISIS and Israel have aligning interests as it relates to Iran and their forces in Syria.  

"Word on the street"? 

Israel right now is watching the Sunnis and the Shiites expend a lot of military resources fighting their little proxy war in Yemen.  They are also watching the Sunnis and Shiites expend a lot of military resources with the fighting in Syria.    ISIS doesn't help them at all with Hamas.

Israel doesn't have to do shit other than an occasional brushback pitch (air strike).

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5 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

Why would Israel pass on intel to us, when Trump has already given Israeli intel to the Russians in that oval office meeting?

I'm willing to bet they've fed us plenty of targets they want taken out.

Or even Turkey.  They have a pretty lengthy on-again/off-again relationship with them.

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Trump is going to at least lob some cruise missiles at them, and maybe more this time.  Bolton is probably telling him that he needs to bomb Damascus lest he be like Obummer.

Edited by Fozzz
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I think Mattis carries the most weight in this instance.  Trump has done a decent job of abdicating authority in military matters to Mattis.

I don’t think Bolton will be as influential on military policy as people suspect.  He was brought on as a face man and to scare the shit out everyone.

Mattis and Nikki Haley are Trump’s last “stars” in an administration that has been something short of a complete disaster.

If there’s a Nixon/Trump parallel, Mattis would be Kissinger because he’s too popular too fire/undermine.

 

 

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Hopefully Trump just takes out Assad’s aircraft with air strikes and sanctions the piss out him.  
Syria is the most complicated geopolitical situation I’ve ever seen.  The challenge for the U.S. is coming up with a clearly defined objective/policy.
 


Even if Matt is comes up with a clearly defined objective/policy, dotus will contradict it within minutes.


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Russia's calling it a hoax.

This is sickening.  I hope we gather up all of our European allies and fuck Assad in his ass.  Unified front.  And if Russia doesn't like it, then fuck them, too.

I'm about as far from a hawk as it gets.  But this shit cannot be allowed.  Ever.  Anywhere.

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Quote

BEIRUT, LEBANON (2:00 P.M.) – The Lebanese military has released an official statement confirming that Israeli warplanes were behind the missile attack on Syria’s T-4 military airbase on very early Monday morning.

According to the Lebanon’s Army Command-Orientation Directorate, four Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace between 3:25 A.M. to 3:35 A.M. on Monday, firing missiles whilst over the Mediterranean Sea to the west of Jounieh.

Given that Russian military authorities claim that two warplanes conducted the T-4 airbase attack, it is possible that the additional 2 aircraft mentioned by Lebanon where only part of the mission to provide electronic countermeasure support – a standard practice.

Lebanon is now the third country, in addition to Russia and Syria, to officially call-out Israel for the missile attack. Israeli military and diplomatic authorities are still yet to comment on the event.

 

Did Israel just use a couple of the F-35s that we sold to them? If the reports by the Russians are accurate, that two F-15s bombed the target, and Lebanon accurately reports visual sighting of four aircraft, then the other two were potentially F-35s providing ECM and stand-off reserve air defense capability.

 

Quote

 

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9 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Russia's calling it a hoax.

This is sickening.  I hope we gather up all of our European allies and fuck Assad in his ass.  Unified front.  And if Russia doesn't like it, then fuck them, too.

I'm about as far from a hawk as it gets.  But this shit cannot be allowed.  Ever.  Anywhere.

Russia's Defense Ministry has said in February and March that they had intelligence concerning anti-Assad forces in Eastern Ghouta planning a "false flag" chemical attack in order to get the US more involved against Assad.

Why would Assad launch a chemical attack right after Trump makes comments about wanting to pull out of Syria?

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16 minutes ago, AnonymousInternetPoster said:

Russia's Defense Ministry has said in February and March that they had intelligence concerning anti-Assad forces in Eastern Ghouta planning a "false flag" chemical attack in order to get the US more involved against Assad.

Why would Assad launch a chemical attack right after Trump makes comments about wanting to pull out of Syria?

Because Putin told him to?

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https://gowans.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/eight-reasons-why-the-latest-syria-chemical-weapons-attack-allegations-are-almost-certainly-complete-nonsense/

Quote

April 8, 2018

By Stephen Gowans

There is much ambiguity surrounding the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, said to have taken place late Saturday, but there are a few matters that are clear.

First, the reports are “unverified”, according to The Wall Street Journal [1] and British Foreign Office [2] and are unconfirmed, according to the US State Department [3]. What’s more, The New York Times noted that it “was not possible to independently verify the reports,” [4] while The Associated Press added that “the reports could not be independently verified.” [5]

Second, according to The Wall Street Journal, it isn’t “clear who carried out the attack” [6] assuming even that one was carried out.

washingtons-long-war-on-syria.jpg?w=200&Third, the “unverified photos and videos” [7] which form the body of (unverified) evidence, were produced by two groups which have an interest in fabricating atrocities to draw the United States more deeply into the Syrian conflict. Both groups, the White Helmets and Syrian American Medical Society, are funded by Western governments [8], which openly seek regime change in Syria and therefore have an interest in producing a humanitarian pretext to justify stepping up their intervention in the country. The Western government-funded White Helmets and Syrian American Medical Society are allied with anti-government jihadists and are active only “in opposition-controlled areas.” [9] They, too, are clearly interested parties.

Fourth, The New York Times indirectly revealed a possible motivation for the two groups to bring forward fabricated atrocity stories. “A new confirmed chemical attack in Syria,” the newspaper noted, “would pose a dilemma for President Trump, who … recently said he wants to get the United States out of Syria.” [10]

Trump’s recent musings about ending the US military occupation of nearly one-third of Syrian territory, including the country’s richest oil fields, was swiftly met by Pentagon opposition, led by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The US president reluctantly accepted a continued occupation, so long as it ends in a matter of months rather than years.

Fabricating an atrocity would pressure Trump to maintain the US occupation indefinitely and possibly escalate US military intervention in Syria, much to the pleasure of Islamist insurgents, their White Helmet and Syrian American Medical Society allies, and US war planners.

If that is the intention, the maneuver appears to have met with success. Trump reacted on Twitter to the unverified (and unverifiable) reports, by dehumanizing Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as an “animal,” who the US president said was responsible for a “humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever.” That the US State Department acknowledged that the reports were unconfirmed failed to restrain the “shoot-from-the-hip” Trump.

Fifth, a chemical attack by the Syrian government would be manifestly self-defeating, and therefore would seem to be highly unlikely. The Syrian Arab Army is on the cusp of an all but inevitable victory in Eastern Ghouta. Why would it cancel its gains by handing the United States a pretext to continue its military intervention in Syria, in the aftermath of Trump signalling his intention to withdraw US troops?

Sixth, it is difficult to conceive of any military benefit to the Syrian Arab Army of deploying chemical weapons. The Syrian military has more lethal conventional ways of killing than using chemical agents, whose effects are unpredictable and typically small scale. In all the alleged chemical attack incidents in Syria, the claimed number of victims is always smaller than that which could easily be produced by air strikes and artillery. Why, then, would the Syrian government use relatively ineffective chemical weapons, creating a pretext for continued US intervention, when it could use more deadly conventional weapons, without a crossing a red line?

Seventh, much of the discourse about chemical weapons in Syria implicitly assumes the Syrian government has them, despite the country cooperating with the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons to eliminate them years ago.

Finally, allegations of chemical weapons use are routinely made against the Syrian government, and while, through repetition, have been transfigured into received truths, have all proved to be unverified. Jim Mattis acknowledged this at a February 2 news conference.

Q: Just make sure I heard you correctly, you’re saying you think it’s likely they have used it and you’re looking for the evidence? Is that what you said?

SEC. MATTIS: … We do not have evidence of it…we’re looking for evidence of it….

Q: So the likelihood was not what your — you’re not characterizing it as a likelihood? I thought I used — you used that word; I guess I misunderstood you.

SEC. MATTIS: Well, there’s certainly groups that say they’ve used it. And so they think there’s a likelihood, so we’re looking for the evidence.

Q: So there’s credible evidence out there that both sarin and chlorine —

SEC. MATTIS: No, I have not got the evidence, not specifically. I don’t have the evidence.

What I’m saying is that other — that groups on the ground, NGOs, fighters on the ground have said that sarin has been used. So we are looking for evidence. I don’t have evidence, credible or uncredible. [11]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but neither is it evidence of guilt. The complete lack of evidence, along with a political context that favors the production of spurious allegations, suggests that the latest chemical weapons claims are—like all that have preceded them—dubious at best.

1. Raja Abdulrahim, “Dozens killed in alleged chemical-weapons attack in Syria,” The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2018.
2. Ben Hubbard, “Dozens suffocate in Syria as government is accused of chemical attack,” The New York Times, April 8, 2018.
3. Hubbard.
4. Hubbard.
5. Zeina Karam and Philip Issa, “Syrian rescuers say at least 40 people killed in eastern Ghouta has attack,” The Associated Press, April 8, 2018.
6. April 8.
7. Abdulrahim, April 8.
8. Raja Abdulrahim, “Syria airstrikes hit hospitals in rebel territory,” The Wall Street Journal, February 5, 2018; Louisa Loveluck and Erin Cunningham, “Dozens killed in apparent chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria, rescue workers say,” The Washington Post, April 8, 2018.
9. Abdulrahim, April 8; Abdulrahim, February 5.
10. Hubbard.
11. Media Availability by Secretary Mattis at the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis, Feb. 2, 2018,

 

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44 minutes ago, AnonymousInternetPoster said:

I hate being in the position of agreeing with Alex Jones and the alt-right, but I find it strange that every single time American policy towards Syria softens, we are made to believe that Assad sees it as an opportunity to violate international law and gas innocent civilians to little or no strategic purpose.

Last year, he allegedly decided it was time to gas women and children right after Nikki Haley publicly stated that removing him from power was no longer an American priority.

 

This year, he allegedly decided to gas women and children right after Trump announced we were gonna cut and run from that quagmire.

 

How does he benefit from that? If he doesn't, who does? The dude is ruthless, but suicidally stupid he is not. 

Edited by MaybeACoordinator
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4 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I hate being in the position of agreeing with Alex Jones and the alt-right, but I find it strange that every single time American policy towards Syria softens, we are made to believe that Assad sees it as an opportunity to violate international law and gas innocent civilians to little or no strategic purpose.

Last year, he allegedly decided it was time to gas women and children right after Nikki Haley publicly stated that removing him from power was no longer an American priority.

 

This year, he allegedly decided to gas women and children right after Trump announced we were gonna cut and run from that quagmire.

 

How does he benefit from that? If he doesn't, who does? The dude is ruthless, but suicidally stupid he is not. 

It’s Putin, not Assad.  

Assad is just the proxy.  There’s no way Assad would have used chemical weapons without approval or orders from the Kremlin.

Putin does this shit because he can.  He is unbelievably cruel when things don’t go his way.

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15 minutes ago, AnonymousInternetPoster said:

What does Putin have to gain by the US becoming more involved in Syria?

That also doesn't make any sense.

He knows the U.S. won’t do much more than take out some hardware.  Putin pushes the envelope anywhere he can.

Motherfucker did a land grab of Crimea which violated all kinds of international laws and got away with it.

He used a banned chemical weapon on British soil and got away with it.

He does this shit to exert his power and basically say, “What are you going to do about it?”

He’s a chaos actor.  Stir up shit and see where to profit.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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I believe Putin would do this, but I still don't see why he would do it, other than to generally fuck with us by drawing us into a mess. Maybe he wants vengeance for our escorting his vacationing soldiers off the planet a few weeks ago? 

His objectives in Syria and ours don't really align, and I really don't think he wants a hot war with us there, and the longer we are both mucking around in that cesspool, the greater the risk that exact scenario unfolds. 

I think there is at least an equal chance that this chemical attack, and the others, were staged, or were perpetrated by one anti-government faction upon another anti-government faction. Of all the actors in Syria, Assad has the least to gain and the most to lose from such attacks, and like his father before him, Assad is clever, if ruthless. And as a prior poster pointed out, if he really wanted to kill a bunch of innocent civilians, I guess just because he just felt like getting his Dr. Evil on that day, he could have used conventional weapons and the world would have shrugged. 

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4 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I believe Putin would do this, but I still don't see why he would do it, other than to generally fuck with us by drawing us into a mess.

Wouldnt that be reason enough? Remember we just imposed new sanctions on Russia, including on some of Putin's rich cronies, in response to the chemical weapon attack in the UK. 

Putin already achieved his main goal in Syria by keeping Assad in power. We're not talking about regime change anymore. Trump caved on that. And just because Trump said we would get out of Syria soon doesn't mean he was really going to act on that. The things that come out of his mouth are just words. They don't necessarily mean anything. 

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16 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Wouldnt that be reason enough? Remember we just imposed new sanctions on Russia, including on some of Putin's rich cronies, in response to the chemical weapon attack in the UK. 

Putin already achieved his main goal in Syria by keeping Assad in power. We're not talking about regime change anymore. Trump caved on that. And just because Trump said we would get out of Syria soon doesn't mean he was really going to act on that. The things that come out of his mouth are just words. They don't necessarily mean anything. 

Maybe so. So would that make the whole White Helmets phenomenon a form of active measures?

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