It’s looking like chemical weapons were used in Syria
The Associated Press says that a “senior administration official” claims that there is “little doubt” that Syria used chemical weapons against the rebels there the other day;
The official says Sunday that the U.S. intelligence community based its assessment given to the White House on “the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured, and witness accounts.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.
The official says the White House believes the Syrian government is barring a U.N. investigative team immediate access to the site of a reported Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs in order to give the evidence of the attack time to degrade.
Yeah, well, Assad, keeping inspectors away from places didn’t work too well for Saddam Hussein, so good luck with that strategy.
Another AP article says that the Obama Administration hasn’t decided how they’re going to react to the incident;
“There are risks and consequences for any option that would be used or not used – for action or inaction,” he told reporters. “You have to come to the central point of what would be the objective if you are to pursue an action or not pursue an action. So all those assessments are being made.”
He said the administration is weighing many factors. These include an intelligence assessment of what some say appears to have been a chemical attack on civilians, as well as what he called legal issues and the matter of international support for any military response.
It sounds like a Joe Bite Me answer. The “risks and consequences” to this administration, of course, don’t compare with the “risks and consequences” any military force faces in the region if they’re deployed and at this juncture in the problem, I don’t see any other option. Still, no one is asking this administration why we should get involved at all since it’s just a despot killing prospective terrorists. Neither is anyone asking where the chemical weapons could have come from in the first place.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
With the American Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power AWOL (ostensibly in Ireland to celebrate the first legal abortion), ANYTHING could have happened. The USSR/Russians learned that lesson in 1950. And considering Power’s love of murder of the helpless, would she vote to stop chemical attacks, or to sell Assad more effective tools for slaughter?
Would not suprise me a bit:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/us-backed-plan-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-syria-045648224.html
Old Guy: not sure how much credence I’d give that report, considering the article cites Infowars.com – which in turn cites e-mails obtained by an unidentified “Malaysian hacker”.
If you drop down a few paragraphs in this article, you will see that the Syrian government has told the US government bluntly to ‘mind your own business’. There’s that ‘red line’ bit, also, but this time, it’s from Syria.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/25/20179917-us-action-would-inflame-the-middle-east-syria-warns-as-white-house-weighs-options?lite
So if they don’t want us there, then we should definitely STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT.
@3
Did not see that, found it on FR. InfoWars are loonies to say the least. Please delete.
With or without independent confirmation, the best assumption to make is that both sides have access to WMD and either could have staged the attack in question for nefarious reasons. Both sides are more than willing to gas each other or anyone else who might interfere in their power struggle.
Remember the Maine! 😉
With apologies to PitBull, a rap parody about hoisted petards:
He talked bunk, especially about red lines, got tied up,
Assad got him hooked, cause he seen him in a (MOPP) suit with a red line lined up,
Hope and Change, nice to meet ya,
But time is money,
Only difference is he owns it
Now let’s stop time, and enjoy this moment
Has anyone noticed that the UN investigators weren’t wearing ANY protective gear at a supposed chemical weapon strike? With military-grade chemical weapons there would be residual residues that would be harmful to unprotected personnel,along with the Doctors and first responders who initially treated the “victims.”
To tack on to what THUNDER 26 said,
The Syrian “rebels” (read terrorists) have hafd access to Chlorine since fall of last year when they seized a Chlorine factory. Now, that factory was said to be broken down by the manager, but it did have 400 TONS of Chlorine in containers ready for use.
Terrorists have already staged small-scale Chlorine attacks in Iraq using tanker trucks rigged with explosives. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to me to see these rat bastards using Chlorine as their own chemical weapons to stage attacks and claim it was Assad’s forces that did it.
http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/syrian-militants-have-access-chlorine-gas-plant-owner/
B’rer Barack better keep his hans off a dat tar baby. He get stuck on dat ting he nebber git away.
Apologies to Uncle Remus.
You have to ask the question “who would get the most benefit from a chemical weapons attack”. In my opinion the easy answer would be the rebels who want help defeating the Syrian government.
@Kenny:
Bingo! We have a Bingo!
@12 I was thinking we in the US get the most benefit if we do nothing, at the end of the day it’s one group of islamic extremists killing another group of islamic extremists. I am not at all clear on what the downside could possibly be to the US….
With luck they will both be able to access enough chemical weapons to wipe each out to the point it will be generations before they recover. That would really be a great day.