Trump strikes Syria

A rare glimpse of somebody in the media providing a rational perspective:

There are things about these kind of stories that seem strange to me.

They appear at pivotal moments, usually based around limited footage taken by persons unknown in a hospital setting and provide emotive and distressing images of people suffering.

Here’s another similar report from Syria that a journalist called Robert Stuart has been doggedly asking questions about: Saving Syria’s Children[/url]

@copa – thanks for sharing that… Worrying times. Who’s playing who?

Worrying times. Who’s playing who?

Proxy wars seem to be a bit of a trend, why would a super power send thier own troops when you can simply sell arms to a faction or regime that will fight your angle and you make money.

Well, it wouldn’t be the 1st time:

Not forgetting the tax-payer funded propaganda machine:

The British government is waging information warfare in Syria by funding media operations for some rebel fighting groups, in the foreign front of what David Cameron has called “the propaganda war” against Islamic State.

The campaign aims to boost the reputation of what the government calls the “moderate armed opposition”, a complex and shifting alliance of armed factions.

Deciding which factions to support is risky for the government because many groups have become increasingly extremist as the five-year civil war grinds on.

Contractors hired by the Foreign Office but overseen by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) produce videos, photos, military reports, radio broadcasts, print products and social media posts branded with the logos of fighting groups, and effectively run a press office for opposition fighters.

Materials are circulated in the Arabic broadcast media and posted online with no indication of British government involvement.

Or the chemical weapons Saddam did have, supplied by the UK and US:

Iraq crisis: Isis jihadists ‘seize Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons stockpile’

Taking a step back, I’m struggling to find a reason why Assad would suddenly use chemical weapons against his own people, especially in the middle of seemingly positive peace talks and when his regime were winning

Is it only me that thinks its a bit odd that a day or so after a terror attack in Russia a Russian backed leader uses chemical weapons on an area controlled by terrorists?

I’m coming round to thinking that whatever happened the Sarin came from Assad and that’s why this ‘punishment’ attack happened.

Did it? or as someone above pointed out the poor old resistance is losing, gassing 100 or so of their own for the good of the cause blaming someone else and then getting the big hitters to step in on your behalf throwing tomahawks is another possible theory?

Its certainly more plausable than the Russians not using the right munitions to incenerate a rebel WMD dump, which also happened to be smack bang in the middle of someones downtown neighbourhood

you only have to look at the photo of the bloke with two dead kids to

either way its grim

That’s a fair point… between that and investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia which was just getting to revealing the sharp end of the wedge, it’s all very handy. Russia ties negated, political crisis averted, Deep State lives to fight another day

There again, where do we go from here:

Take out Assad, ISIS get stronger, military intervention and ground troops become necessary…

Doubtless someone will profit, whatever the outcome

59, FFS. They must have been coming up to their best before date and due for decommissioning.

Perhaps a bit past that…

“According to Russian monitoring tools, only 23 missiles reached the Syrian airbase. It’s not clear where the remaining 36 cruise missiles fell,” Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov is quoted as saying.

Is it only me that thinks its a bit odd that a day or so after a terror attack in Russia a Russian backed leader uses chemical weapons on an area controlled by terrorists?

They’d just use conventional weapons, and they’d choose an obviously ‘Islamist military’ target.

It’s also a week after the yanks dropped their policy that Assad had to be removed. The only thing ISIS could to to reverse that would be to arrange a fake/real chemical attack on civilians, apparently by Assad. That’s a more significant coincidence IMHO.

Attacks on civilians have been faked in this war. This all took place in a Islamist heartland so I find it hard to believe any impartial reporter has seen any evidence first hand – if a BBC journo walked in there he’d get his head chopped off. It feels to me like we’re taking the militants word for this whole episode.

Did it?

I’m assuming the Militants can’t make Sarin, so if they’ve got some they must nicked it from Assad somehow at some time.

It’s not so much about proxy wars that concerns me as the tactics of war being employed. Are war crimes now being used as a weapon of war to provoke action?

We are part of this. Our reaction to what the media tell us / shape the stories around these atrocities will put pressure (or not) on the government to take certain action (or not), if not immediately then perhaps in future, and the government will be mindful of that.

Our government has come out in support of the strike, which superficially seems reasonable (this war crime needs a response). But have we been played? What are the consequences? How much of this is Trump taking advantage of a situation (see my previous post)? There are no immediately obvious answers to me…

No expert in these matters, is this a reasonable conclusion re use of gloves?

The only reasonable conclusion is to assume everything you read / see on Twitter is total rubbish.

Unless Justin Rainmondo is an expert in chemical weapons, and given he’s posting on twitter, i suspect not, then i don;t think you can read anything into what he (or anyone else on twitter) says.

I’d like to think the world’s security forces would have spotted a giveaway as obvious as that, so I’m guessing it’s inconclusive.

I’m assuming the Militants can’t make Sarin, so if they’ve got some they must nicked it from Assad somehow at some time

pretty sure by the time a sample has gotten back to the DSTL they will be able to tell when how and who made it.

Of course the Russians would claim lots of the US missiles missed there intended targets, as they were rather touchy that the ones that they fired crashed all over the place….

Just part of the great propaganda game…

Regarding the use of poison gas as a weapon, I spent a lot of time talking to an WW1 veteran and of all the horrors he talked about being gasses was clearly far more distressing.

Whilst all forms of killing are abhorrent this is a particularly cruel and vile method to which there can be no justification.

I’d like to think the world’s security forces would have spotted a giveaway as obvious as that, so I’m guessing it’s inconclusive.

That’s the tricky part of the duality we live in… on the one hand, you have PR firms with fabricated stories coaching people to have maximum emotional impact as in the Kuwaiti Nariyah testimony, or of course the Weapons of mass destruction report… so time and again, they’ve been duped too, or complicit.

It’s a dirty game, there’s no doubt

I’d like to think the world’s security forces would have spotted a giveaway as obvious as that,

what like Saddams WMDs ?

the dossier and WMD gets trotted out each time

Just because they once lied does not mean they are lying this time

Its also actually happened and therefore can be more thoroughly tested

We all know there are smoke and mirrors and we all knwo which posters are consistent in seeing conspiracies everywhere. Discussing this issue with them is pointless as EVERYTHING is a conspiracy
Makes you think eh

Just because they once lied does not mean they are lying this time

It’s not the lying it’s the believing your own lies bad intelligence, how **** long did they spend searching the length and breadth of Iraqi looking for the WMDs ?

Discussing this issue with them is pointless

So what happened to the chemical weapons ISIS seized in Iraq?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10910868/Iraq-crisis-Obama-may-launch-air-strikes-without-Congress-amid-calls-for-Maliki-to-go-live.html

Were they the same ones supplied by the UK and US?

the dossier and WMD gets trotted out each time

Just because they once lied does not mean they are lying this time

Its also actually happened and therefore can be more thoroughly tested

We all know there are smoke and mirrors and we all knwo which posters are consistent in seeing conspiracies everywhere. Discussing this issue with them is pointless as EVERYTHING is a conspiracy
Makes you think eh

+100

Jhj: you say you’re not an expert and that you don’t know if the conclusion in that tweet is reasonable. But you’ve already retweeted it?

As above, who is Justin Raimondo?
Is that photo of victims of the chemical attack? Do the rescuers have gloves that they could use? Are gloves necessary? Does sarin hang around or evaporate away and pose less of a threat after a few hours?

I don’t know, btw, but if you’d gone to the effort of faking a chemical attack you think you’d try to look the part.

No expert in these matters, is this a reasonable conclusion re use of gloves?

What do you expect them to do, leave the children to die whilst they pop over to the local glove shop, perhaps catch a latte on the way over ?

You are obviously capable of typing, could you try a *little* bit of thinking _before_ you show off your skills.

let’s look at what Chilcot concluded

An ingrained belief in the intelligence community that Iraq had retained some chemical and biological weapons. It concluded in September 2002 that “Iraq was producing chemical and biological agents and that there were development programmes for longer-range missiles capable of delivering them”. It was wrong.
The intelligence agencies had a serious blind spot. “At no stage was the proposition that Iraq might no longer have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or programmes identified and examined by either JIC or the policy community.”
A report by MI6 on WMDs “should have been shown to the relevant weapons experts in the Ministry of Defence’s intelligence staff, some of whom expressed scepticism about Saddam having WMDs.

who needs to be played when assumption is already the mother of all **** ups!

Does sarin hang around or evaporate away and pose less of a threat after a few hours?

no it will remain on clothes and in water however in a third world country where the actual chance of a full on hazardous chemical shower being rolled along (i dont think they have much in the way of basic hospital care do they?) from memory though it will contained in water rather than be able to breathed in.

Syria isn’t (well, wasn’t) a third world country. It was quite a prosperous place until the civil war.

But no, it looks like a fire hose being used in the background.

the dossier and WMD gets trotted out each time

Just because they once lied does not mean they are lying this time

Go to any high street bookshop and buy a book on the CIA or any other Western (and Israeli) intelligence agency and you can read, with clarity, that they have continuously lied, time and time again, for decades.

And will continue to lie, may I add, because that is their modus operandi, to deceive and obfuscate the truth, in order to facilitate the enactment of a specific geopolitical goal or goals. No conspiracy, its all there in declassified documents.

Jhj: you say you’re not an expert and that you don’t know if the conclusion in that tweet is reasonable. But you’ve already retweeted it?

I haven’t retweeted it, but I posted the image here to see what folks thoughts were…

Well impressed by your ability to ask reasonable and probing questions:

As above, who is Justin Raimondo?
Is that photo of victims of the chemical attack? Do the rescuers have gloves that they could use? Are gloves necessary? Does sarin hang around or evaporate away and pose less of a threat after a few hours?

Like I say, I’m no expert on Chemical Weapons, however, I can tell you that Justin Raimondo is an editor at Antiwar.com

I don’t know, btw, but if you’d gone to the effort of faking a chemical attack you think you’d try to look the part.

My thoughts exactly, though this is also an entirely reasonable perspective:

What do you expect them to do, leave the children to die whilst they pop over to the local glove shop, perhaps catch a latte on the way over ?

The problem arises in that almost all modern wars have been started under false pretences, so to avoid a recurring cycle of bullshit, massive civilian casualties and long term escalation of conflict which only serves to create a more dangerous environment for us all, whilst profiting a small minority of individuals who have sufficient economic and political sway to turn the media in their favour, we all need to start asking more questions.

What do you expect them to do, leave the children to die whilst they pop over to the local glove shop, perhaps catch a latte on the way over ?

The problem arises in that almost all modern wars have been started under false pretences, so to avoid a recurring cycle of bullshit, massive civilian casualties and long term escalation of conflict which only serves to create a more dangerous environment for us all, whilst profiting a small minority of individuals who have sufficient economic and political sway to turn the media in their favour, we all need to start asking more questions.

You could have a TRY at answering the question you were asked and have quoted.

I’ve answered it…

I thought the advice (to first responders in general) is to assess the situation before rendering help, if you endanger yourself by helping one person and are incapacitated how many people that you could have helped may die?

Would they react rationally, emotionally or in the middle of a civil war they might just be dead bodies that they have no idea of the method of death.

True, sitting here it’s all useless supposition

Yeh comparisons to the Iraq /WMD secanrio is not helpful.
The images and video evidence of chemical weapons being used in Syria is all over the Internet.

As to who is responsible, well that’s a can of worms but it is happening, I don’t think there’s any reasonable doubt about that 🙁

Apparently a terrorist lorry crash into a crowd in Stockholm being reported from some Swedish friends on Facebook, guess another lone wolf suicide run..

True, sitting here it’s all useless supposition

Therein lies the problem… all the MPs, the Media Editors, the Army Generals, the Prime Ministers, the Presidents etc are acting on remote intelligence provided to them from afar, in a world of propaganda, corporate influence and a weapons industry with a massive interest in keeping conflict going.

Unless there’s a paradigm shift and everyone groups together and addresses the root cause of conflict for profit, the same cycle will repeat and escalate, sewing hatred deeper into the fabric of society and giving rise to more and more incidents which put civilian populations the world over in peril.

Interesting to see Ann Coulter, Jeremy Corbyn and Katie Hopkins taking a similar view of Trump’s action… (From the BBC link on p2)