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About LinkBacksI must have missed something with the last reference!Originally Posted by Kai
Syrian government
Fake
Premeditated attack by rebels
I must have missed something with the last reference!
I think they got him , remember he was disguised as security , but had one of those fancy protective suits at the ready in case the sheep hit the fan ..
Poor guys probably in Guatemala bay gett ing his wozzels deep fried or they've de /reprogrammed him like those cults do .
He might even be back here working for the NSA now and we dont even know it !
all I'm saying is ...
Wake up and smell the chemical coffee!
Assad was winning the war. the only way he could lose was if there was intervention from outside Syria. This is another attempt by the rebels (after attacking turkey) to get outside involvement. It's so obvious it's laughable
Well there's winning and there's winning. Some commentators have mentioned a particularly stubborn area near Damascus that had been testing the patience of the regime commanders..
That's plausible.
But so is the notion that he'd use chemical weapons because, a) he can, and b) that kind of rationale suggests he wouldn't, and c) for someone that's "winning", he's making awfully hard work of it.
I don't see it as him "winning". He may have the advantage, but this thing has been see-sawing back and forth, and for someone that started out with warplanes, helicopters and heavy armour, he's having a hell of a time dislodging what started out as a ramshackle collection of dissidents with a few rifles and handguns.
Yet here we are, two years down the line, and he's "winning" so thoroughly he cannot even fully dislodge the rebels from his own capital city.
That kind of chemical attack is almost as much about psychology, about fear and morale, as it is about winning. It's the same kind of logic that the SS used to execute civilians after a resistance attack, because they couldn't find the resistance.
A logical case can be made for why Assad wouldn't do it, but one can also be made for why he would, not least that he can argue that he wouldn't especially while inspectors are there, when it can also be argued that that's precisely the best time, because they are there.
Logic only gets us so far, and in this situation, that's not far at all.
Actually on the ground the SAA is starting to gain the initiative. At the beginning they were trying to fight a conventional war against an insurgency and even things like deploying armour into city without adequate infantry support.It is indirect and direct Iranian and Hezbollah support and training,which helped the SAA change tactics and fight a more guerilla style war themselves. However,they actually started changing their tactics to match the rebels this year which has helped them significantly and the various rebel factions have started in-fighting more and more. Moreover,it seems the rebels don't have as much support among the populace as they had at the beginning, as not only have the islamists done harsh things themselves in areas they control but there have been many situations where they have looted people's homes,etc. There have been situations where residents have banded together to throw rebel elements at times(!).
There are huge threads on the major military forums for the Syrian war,which often has pro-Syrian government and pro-rebel posters fighting it out,but you get a very good idea of how both sides have been slagging it out in the last few years.
Perhaps some of you should think of the recent wars we have been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan or even the Afghanistan war of the 1980s with the Russians too.
Multiple superpowers had a hell of time dislodging people with infantry weapons using warplanes,helicopters and heavy armour themselves.
Look at the wars in Nepal and Sri Lanka too,where conventional armies with similar weapons found it very hard to defeat such tactics too. I lived in Sri Lanka during the war and it was a bloody grind of a conflict which killed the better part of 100000 people.
Moreover,using chemical weapons in Damascus makes NO sense,and I have listed plenty of reasons why.
If this had been used in Homs or somewhere else in the north where the military has more of a hard time,it might have more plausible. Not the place where loads of UN inspectors and journalists and most of the Syrian government are located.
It is what they would have done if they wanted to loose the war. The ONLY people who would get an advantage from such an attack are the rebels. NOBODY else.
The whole stuff about them trying to shell shock people is not pertinent TBH in this case if start considering the bigger pictures.
Israel has attacked Syria loads of times in the last year against major military installations.
The last attack was only in July against a naval facility housing Yakhont antiship missiles.
Outside hyperbole the Syrian government has done nothing. Why?? They know very well any military response would create an Israeli counter-attack which would destroy half their military. Syria knows from experience.
So,going from that and knowing very well ,the US,France and the UK have been, going ON and ON about how chemical weapons use would lead to direct military action,are people really thinking Syria would try that??
If they cannot find the will to fight Israel who is not a superpower,than do people really believe they want to take on the militaries of THREE PERMANENT members of the UN security council?? Really??
The only possible way I can see the Syrian armed forces using such a weapon is if someone directly broke military protocol and used the weapons illegally.
That would be the same situation like in the My Lai or Kandahar massacres where military personal used military materiel illegally to kill people,and ultimately they had to pay the price for their crimes.
If that is the case,the people involved should be handed over to relevant authorities for an internationally mandated trial,and Syria should be offered the chance to have an international taskforce to secure its chemical weapons,to stop further breakdowns happening.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 31-08-2013 at 07:32 PM.
That's one thing I was wondering. How disciplined is the Syrian army and are those with access to chemical weapons sane enough not to use them? It would also explain the delay in allowing the inspectors in. First to make sure and clean up if it indeed was the action of a rogue commander. The alternative, that is, to go "Oops, yeah it was one of our troops. I never gave the order, sorry okay?", would probably not go down well as an excuse (besides, when was the last time any country admitted to a mistake instead of trying to cover it up).
I think possibly he used it to get the war over as quickly as possible, the longer it keeps going on the more likely the Americans are going to get involved and they'd like to see him out so perhaps they can broker a peace deal between Syria and Israel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23924805
Interview with Deputy Foreign Minister of Syria.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Rep...xpected-325389
If that is true there is nothing 'limited' about these strikes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188
Syrian rebels have already used SARIN in Aleppo
Allegedly. The report states strong suspicion - not concrete evidence.
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It's almost as if there is some kind of ware going on, a nasty civil kind.
If only some superpowers could go in and remove all the toys. As they did in Bosnia or Sierra Leone!
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
rather more concrete than a certain Mr KERRY flying around the world drumming up support ` we have the evidence but not telling you` kind....
in other news reports - the Russians actually have the home made weapons used to launch the SARIN..... slide on to mortar weapons rather than military and factory made stuff
Indeed - there is little doubt that nerve agents have been used on the civil population, the question of which side remains unclear. There may be a case for a UM peacekeeping force to intervene on humanitarian grounds (and maybe determine who has used these weapons.
There may be intelligence (as Cameron alluded to in Parliament) but that is unlikely to enter the public domain. So the 'who' consists of unproven allegations while the fact of use is pretty much conclusive.
Depends how that evidence was gathered - if it reveals sources or methods, it won't necessarily be disclosed.
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