the OCPW report actually provides additional support that it was an aircraft attack in the form of corroborating eyewitness statements (which is a fact no one disagrees with), and also concludes that sarin or a sarin-like substance was used, so...

4/11/2018 1:14:05 PM

so i guess that means it was rebels again since they did the last one and opcw-un disarmed assads stockpile.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-un-mission-report-confirms-that-opposition-rebels-used-chemical-weapons-against-civilians-and-government-forces/5363139
posting this as a reference sjnce many seem to have forgotten

4/11/2018 1:21:52 PM

... based on the opinion of seymore hersh, who was entirely discredited

4/11/2018 1:23:51 PM

Why is the American left and the Democratic Party banging the war drums? Do they not understand the seriousness of starting another war? Why do rank and file liberals support this shit?

Any U.S. involvement in Syria is just another war for Israel. This is Iraq all over again. It's the same exact pattern, and it seems like Americans are dumb enough to fall for it again.

4/11/2018 3:35:04 PM

The “American left” doesn’t control one branch of federal government. Some on the center-left are unwisely doing what you say but to blame the left for doing something they literally don’t have control to do is... odd.

4/11/2018 3:46:22 PM

I'm just talking about rhetoric. Go on /r/politics, etc - places where libs hang out - and they want war because This Is Another Genocide. The military funding bills have been almost entirely bipartisan.

I understand why the right is mostly neo-cons. That part makes sense, that's how it has been for a while. I don't understand why libs are getting onboard with the "well we have to do something" propaganda.

4/11/2018 3:50:21 PM

are libs getting on board? do you have examples?

edit: haha dems are on board with this

[Edited on April 11, 2018 at 3:53 PM. Reason : .]

4/11/2018 3:51:58 PM

^^
r/politics after 2016 turned into a neoliberal hellscape. Please don't take it as a representation of leftist views.

4/11/2018 3:53:38 PM

r/politics is a cesspool. as most default subs are...

4/11/2018 3:55:43 PM

Quote :

"r/politics after 2016 turned into a neoliberal hellscape. Please don't take it as a representation of leftist views."

I think it's a good enough representation of your standard, rank-and-file urban dwelling left-leaning person. The "real leftists" are a fringe element with about as much voting significance as right-wing nationalists.

Quote :

"are libs getting on board? do you have examples? edit: haha dems are on board with this"

Well, it's complicated. Dems in Congress are definitely on board. What's made this complicated is that the Russia collusion stuff has turned Russia into the enemy which has fed into this tribal desire to start another cold war. That's mainly where your garden variety milquetoast liberal has focused their efforts.

The problem is that now there's a real threat of war - which Dems have been prodding Trump to get into - and Trump is deranged enough to actually do it. Now Dems have to walk back the previous rhetoric ("well, Russia isn't that bad, let's not get carried away") or get on board with a full-blown war. If a war starts, I expect Dems will reclaim their anti-war moral high ground. I don't think Dems ever really hated Russia, they just saw it as a vector to attack Trump's credibility.

[Edited on April 11, 2018 at 4:03 PM. Reason : ]

4/11/2018 4:01:21 PM

https://twitter.com/ColumbiaBugle/status/983513779014057984

Say what you will about Tucker Carlson, he's definitely right on this topic.

4/11/2018 4:36:51 PM

Quote :

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j_Z1f84Ps8 "

Wow, truth bombs all over the place, gg Peter Ford.

Check out his video from last year, almost exactly a year ago to the day (Apr 7), that time on air inside a BBC studio, so harder to cut off and talk over. His reasoning then just as relevant now as it was a year ago.

(the host says to Peter that he is one of the very few "chiming with the Russians"... because questioning something which has no proof means being Russian a few months ago wasn't last year's attack declared as having been carried out by anti-Assad rebels???)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LKsn4ZutxQ

4/11/2018 7:59:34 PM

Donald Trump just made John Bolton National Security Advisor - a war monger that has now served in both Neo-con and Trumpist administrations (and against the recommendation of basically everyone but the war mongers),

But if we get in a military conflict,

It will be all Dems fault because SOME of them think we should intervene in a conflict that has killed ~500,000, but then later get wishy-washy and decide maybe war is a bad idea.

4/11/2018 8:06:36 PM

It definitely won't be all their fault - it'll just be partially their fault. Obama (and really, Hillary) got us into a lot of this mess, but they only executing on the neo-con playbook that's been around for decades. No need to play the blame game though - Republicans are running the show now and they're fucking up.

4/11/2018 9:15:24 PM

Quote :

"There was no chemical attack. Am on the ground in Damascus & #EasternGhouta. No patients were admitted to local hospitals with CW poisoning, soil samples tested negative. Nothing substantiates claims of CW attack. Only #WhiteHelmet hoax movies, shld be investigated 4 child abuse."

https://twitter.com/VanessaBeeley/status/984116064035524609

Russia, three weeks before alleged Syrian gas attack: Syrian rebels are planning to stage a chemical attack

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/984088307507388418

Journalist before the attack, responding to Trump announcement to leave Syria:

Quote :

""If, after this announcement, we end up with headlines announcing proclaiming another gas attack by Assad against his own people, do not believe it. He may be a tyrant, but he’s not an idiot. The US leaving his country is good for him, and a gas attack prevents the US exit."

https://twitter.com/RealSteveCox/status/981539844546486272

----

Everything about this is shaping up to be another false flag operation. The fact that the U.S. and allies want to rush into war before any sort of investigation should tell you everything you need to know.

[Edited on April 11, 2018 at 11:40 PM. Reason : ]

4/11/2018 11:34:27 PM

You need to be 100% clear on what you mean by a false flag. Are you sticking to the narrative that absolutely no chemical attack happened on the ground? That first tweet - I assume Ghouta in this case is referring to the attack in 2013? This person is claiming THAT ABSOLUTELY NO CHEMICAL WEAPONS WERE USED. Not even trying to place blame elsewhere, but outright denying it even happened.

We have environmental samples from the attack site, we have blood and urine samples from survivors, and we have tissue samples from a few of the 250+ that were confirmed dead in that attack. A vast majority of those tested positive for Sarin. The sarin used in that attack was roughly TWICE as concentrated as what Sadaam used in the Iran-Iraq war and that several hundred pounds were probably used in the attack. (suggests a state actor btw).

IMO, at a minimum, it’s CLEAR that sarin was used in the Ghouta attack. Anyone that claims differently is full of shit.

4/12/2018 6:59:57 AM

Ok, upon further review it looks like some people are referring to Douma as Eastern Ghouta, and that “reporter” is probably referring to this most recent attack (I’m in no way a Syrian geography expert).


But the point still stands, are you running with the narrative that absolutely NO chemical weapons were used in this most recent attack and that the photos and videos of dead bodies foaming at the mouth and eye burns are all hoaxes?

4/12/2018 8:21:29 AM

Russia has flip flopped like five times so far on this attack alone between rebels were planning it to no attack happened to any bombing is going to contaminate the attack site. I don’t know what the current line of thought is in Moscow right now but I think we are back to rebels did it.

4/12/2018 8:29:00 AM

A false flag is when you make an event seem like it was perpetrated by someone else

So in this case the rebels framing Assad for the attack to garner sympathy for the rebels themselves.

I did see a report a few weeks back that investigators couldn’t find proof the first attack (using nerve gas) was Assad.

This most recent attack was chlorine (a relatively much simpler chemical to acquire and weapon size). It’s a true and valid statement to say we should be cautious about attributing this attack and acting on it.

This is an extremely brutal and desperate civil war, both sides have killed thousands of civilians at this point.

4/12/2018 8:30:00 AM

Quote :

"Russia, three weeks before alleged Syrian gas attack: Syrian rebels are planning to stage a chemical attack"

pretty meaningless, this is exactly the kind of obfuscation and disinformation one would use if they are planning to use chemical weapons or think an ally may use chemical weapons


the "why would assad use chemical weapons after the us was leaving?!" narrative is already pretty silly, the US has already shown they won't act after chemical weapon attacks or will have a weak and ineffective response, and trump has expressed interest in getting out of syria and has made plenty of statements friendly to russia... that's hardly the recipe for a strong deterrent for someone to use chemical weapons.

4/12/2018 8:33:43 AM

^

4/12/2018 12:19:24 PM

It’s still a provocation they could easily avoid by waiting more than a few days.

And what is the strong response you’d recommend?

4/12/2018 12:35:26 PM

Quote :

"I did see a report a few weeks back that investigators couldn’t find proof the first attack (using nerve gas) was Assad."

which report, which investigators? the OCPW mission, for example, wasn't to determine the source only if chemical weapons were used.

Quote :

"This most recent attack was chlorine (a relatively much simpler chemical to acquire and weapon size)."

the claim is that there were also signs of exposure to an organophosphate in addition to the chlorine gas, the claims suggest that perhaps chlorine was used to cover up or hide the use of the more serious nerve agent

4/12/2018 12:37:38 PM

there was np advantage for this attack. only negative motive for assad. the attack took place far from the front in a location of no strategic value. they were already winning. we are expected to believe assad has lost his mind, is dumb, and just itching to see people suffer from chemical weapons.


meanwhile there is all the motive in the world for anti assads to have this attack. they are in desperation mode and the us was giving up. they needed a list ditch effort but

4/12/2018 3:53:33 PM

Counterpoint: Trump doesn’t actually make the decisions and no one actually believed we were going to pull out of Syria.

4/12/2018 4:00:57 PM

it was in a conflict area not "far from the front", winning doesn't mean won, the use of chemical weapons doesn't mean anyone has lost their mind because of the absence of any real deterrents, lots of civilians have been killed by conventional weapons so that doesn't seem like an effective deterrent to chemical weapons

you're deciding it was rebels without any evidence, short of major boots on the ground action we won't ever get any evidence, there isn't support for major action even with the chemical attacks, we can't put boots on the ground in syria if we wanted to without majorly escalating our tensions with russia into a conflict, etc...

4/12/2018 4:04:30 PM

im not saying it was the rebels, im just leaning to them being the prime suspect and casting doubt on the idea that it was assad. im not saying we should take action against the rebels, im saying we shouldnt take any action because we cant be sure.

but even if we could be sure, there is no action that provides a better outcome than what we currently have. last years missiles were ineffective.

the best way to prevent suffering would have been to not start and prolong a nasty civil war by arming and supporting rebels/jihadists in the first place.

4/12/2018 4:27:34 PM

Quote :

"im saying we shouldnt take any action because we cant be sure. "

We shouldn't take military action even if it's proven Assad did it.

4/12/2018 4:58:36 PM

Coordinated disinformation https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-trolls-denied-syrian-gas-attackbefore-it-happened?ref=home

4/12/2018 7:42:39 PM

^

Quote :

"truther chum"

I’m definitely using this again.

^^exactly. I’m not saying that anyone on this board suggested this, but I did see the argument online that went something like:

“US intervention in Syria is a horrible idea!! Therefore Assad can’t be responsible for chemical attacks, because it might lead to the US trying to intervene !!!!

Huh? We can condemn Assad if the evidence suggests he is to blame, and still not go to war (because it’s obvious to all but the war mongering dolts that the US jumping in isn’t gonna make things better).

4/12/2018 8:02:29 PM

Not in this thread but in another I said Trumps initial foreign policy instinct in Syria is probably right (broken clocks, etc). I don’t think for a second he’s in control with the Bolton’s/Pompeos in charge but his initial instinct is absolutely right. That does NOT mean that Assad is some charitable guy just trying to protect his people through altruism, though.

You can believe Assad is a humanitarian nightmare while also thinking it’s not our job to police the world and think that we tend to make things worse at times.

[Edited on April 12, 2018 at 9:17 PM. Reason : X]

4/12/2018 9:16:43 PM

Quote :

"there was np advantage for this attack. only negative motive for assad."

This was my initial thought. They already basically won; where's the benefit for Syria - or for Russia, which surely must have signed off on the thing?

But then it turns out that the real brains behind Russia's successes in the past few years, one general Gerasimov, said weeks ago that he had evidence that the U.S. and/or rebels were going to do a "false flag" chemical weapons attack...in Eastern Ghouta. He said this a day or two after the Skipral's got poisoned in Salisbury.

Now, Gerasimov is so full of shit it's coming out of his borscht-hole, of course. And he knew that his little prediction wasn't going to convince any big decision makers outside of Russia's sphere. But it gave Russia/Syria a little bit of cover to launch the attack, ratcheting up tensions and distracting everybody from their latest flagrant assassination attempt. At the same time as they are reported to be dramatically increasing the troop presence on the Ukrainian border, at the same time as artillery activity in Eastern Ukraine is on the rise.

Now the most cynical, conspiracy-prone part of my brain thinks that Moscow and Washington are communicating about next steps, because neither side benefits from WWIII but they both benefit from everybody focusing on Syria right now. Trump gets some news cycles on that rather than Cohen/Daniels/Comey. And Putin gets the West to ignore murders on their soil and, possibly, another intervention in Ukraine. So maybe they agree on some largely symbolic U.S. missile strikes, some of which Russia manages to shoot down.

But I'm not a conspiracy guy, because conspiracies are hard to keep together. I'm worried that Gerasimov/Putin are the only ones who know what's going on, and they're relying on being able to predict Trump's responses. I don't think they can, and I don't love that the fate of the world might depend on Donald Trump behaving rationally just as he's more backed into a corner than ever before. Because if we launch a missile strike and Russia does anything that looks like retaliation, things could go downhill fast and we're at the nadir of our "leader of the free world" status.

4/13/2018 8:09:02 AM

AP tweet said Russia officially said it was a false flag set up by Britain. Wat?

4/13/2018 11:02:48 AM

It’s kinda insulting they think their bullshit is gonna float, again. This is the lie you’re gonna stick to?

They are still claiming that no chemical weapons were actually used at the site as well (as far as I can tell). So basically the claim is that the U.K. faked 40+ people’s deaths in an active battle zone that has been locked down for weeks, where the U.K. isn’t even supposed to be operating (aren’t they supposed to be East of the Euphrates?).



If I’m President, here is what I do:

-first call Putin and Lavrov fucking liars straight to their faces. Immediately declassify all evidence that could back up that assertion. In fact, I’d release everything I can find that destroys their credibility on the international stage.

-Immediately pull all US Troops back toward the Iraq border, claim its for their safety since Russia is an out-of-control bad actor that is looking for escalation.

-Increase the number of Syrian refugees allowed in our country. Give a speech on the humanitarian situation every chance I get.

-Announce a trillion dollars over the next 10 years for green energy research and installation. Float some of that cash to whomever Russia’s primary oil/gas customers are so they can lower their need for Russian oil. Get on board with global regulation of CO2. Bring back those tougher fuel efficiency standards Trump just nixed. Get Venezuelan oil pumping again (somehow). Twist the Saudi’s arm until they crank up more oil production. Hell, I might even release oil/gas from the strategic reserve. The overall goal here is to drive the price of oil to under $30 a barrel and keep it there for as long as possible. When Putin can’t afford to make pension payments to the ~30% of the population that lives off the system (Putin’s main base of support) he’ll have more important things to focus on than playing games in Syria.

4/13/2018 12:19:43 PM

Fuck. Bad stuff about to go down that won’t change a damn thing..

4/13/2018 8:39:36 PM

Its also funny how you will never hear anyone talk about Turkish occupation of Northern Syria

4/19/2018 1:45:58 AM

Except for the news stories and a Wikipedia page?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_occupation_of_northern_Syria

4/19/2018 7:01:37 AM

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44746147


but hey guys check out the report from this one questionable reporter who was in a russian convoy who asked some people who weren't witnesses and who were living under russian occupation what happened, the interim report is probably wrong!

7/6/2018 8:14:14 PM

Typically doesn’t calling something a false flag before it happens generally undercut the idea of eventually claiming it to be a false flag?

9/7/2018 12:03:48 PM

Quote :

"significant minority (16–20%) of Twitter counternarrative messaging in the immediate aftermath of and regarding Syrian chemical weapons attacks is disseminated by a well-coordinated, narrowly focused state actor, almost certainly the Russian Federation. - We did not, however, find evidence that the Syrian government maintains its own independent apparatus for extensive counternarrative messaging on Twitter. "

https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/op37-all-the-world-is-staged.pdf

20% of the Twitter traffic discussing Duouma, right after the attack, was probably Russian bots or troll accounts. Wow.

9/19/2018 8:16:52 AM

We are pulling out of Syria completely it looks like. Not a bad thing but the reason (we have definitively defeated ISIS) is obviously a lie.

Also, this doesn’t square with our re-hardening on iran. His foreign policy is so all over the place.

[Edited on December 19, 2018 at 9:34 AM. Reason : Of course the Kurds are fucked again ]

12/19/2018 9:33:01 AM

that's because he doesn't have a policy, his policy is just who he likes on a given day and what was the most recent thing someone he likes at that moment told him

12/19/2018 9:43:47 AM

All state dept personnel are being evacuated in the next 24 hours.

What on earth is happening? This is bananas.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for winding this down but this stinks rotten. You don’t do it literally overnight.

[Edited on December 19, 2018 at 11:11 AM. Reason : In all seriousness the Kurds are going to get massacred]

12/19/2018 11:08:58 AM

12/19/2018 11:15:26 AM

cui bono?

Russia.

12/20/2018 5:06:20 PM

Quote :

"In all seriousness the Kurds are going to get massacred"

Yep.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/20/why-it-mattered-and-still-matters-that-flynn-continued-to-hide-his-true-relationship-with-turkey/

Quote :

"Since his first days as President, Trump (and Mike Flynn, until he pled guilty) has been trying to hide the true substance of the relationship he had with both Russia and Turkey. As it happens, it appears that Turkey was the country that ultimately exploited that leverage. While Trump did little more than greet Putin at the G20 in Argentina as more details of his negotiations with Russia over a Trump Tower have become clear, he did meet with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And he spoke with Erdogan by phone yesterday last Friday before he unexpectedly announced that American troops were withdrawing from Syria. In the wake of yesterday’s decision, Nancy Pelosi (who as a Gang of Eight member, may know non-public information about all this) tied Trump’s announcement to the Flynn sentencing hearing and his work for Turkey; she suggested Trump had made the decision to serve his own personal or political objectives."

Quote :

"I don’t know whether Pelosi is correct (and I actually hope that we do get out of Syria, though perhaps congressional oversight can force Trump to do this in a way that doesn’t result in genocide for our longtime Kurdish allies). But I know that when Trump ordered a guy who was still on Turkey’s payroll to initiate the negotiations that resulted in yesterday’s announcement, then tried to sustain lies those negotiations, he effectively ceded a lot of control over how negotiations would proceed to the countries that shared his and Flynn’s secrets. And, of course, Trump’s Treasury Department also announced yesterday that it was reversing sanctions on Oleg Deripaska’s company (though not Deripaska himself, and restrictions on his ownership are quite significant)."

12/20/2018 6:33:37 PM

Is there any justification for staying in Syria that doesn't boil down to the U.S. being the world police?

The whole point is that, yes, there will be serious consequences resulting from a U.S. withdrawal. Yes, it will leave a power vacuum and there's a good chance that bad people will fill that vacuum, largely because good leaders, by Western standards, don't exist in Syria.

The idea that we just need to wait for a better time so the withdrawal can be orderly has been used by neoconservatives...well, forever, basically. It turns out that it's never a good time to withdraw because it was a bad idea to go in. It's like a bad marriage. Divorce is going to suck, but it's probably better than staying married.

There's a certain hubris in saying "we can still fix it!" It's like a gambling addict just wanting one more turn to double their money. It's not under control and we aren't helping.

12/24/2018 2:25:11 PM

There's an element of a desire to fix it, to have better leadership, to keep a vacuum from getting filled with something worse (ISIS).

In Syria in particular, though, I think a lot of it is pure geopolitics--it's a realization that threat nations will extend and cement their spheres there if we aren't in the mix. It's a little bit of standing up for Syrians against Assad, somewhat more of exterminating ISIS vermin, and a lot of exerting influence against that of Russia and particularly Iran.

That isn't really the same thing as being the police.

[Edited on December 24, 2018 at 7:40 PM. Reason : ]

12/24/2018 7:39:40 PM

It gets reduced to "world police" because no one is explaining the context or importance of geopolitical strategy. The immediate questions most have are "how does Russia or Iran having more 'influence' or 'exerting control over an expanding sphere of influence' impact us in any way, particularly directly?"

It's a failure of communication from the press which spends less time contextualizing things than it does airing talking heads talking about the same two news stories in any given 24 hour news period. It's also a failure of politicians. And it's a failure of the voter to do any independent research to learn.

In any event, even I personally have trouble understanding how Syria or Iraq are at all more important than the Ukraine situation. And yet, we will dump troops in the Middle East within 24 hours of the slightest aggravation but an outright annexation in Ukraine resulted in almost nothing from us. I'd really like someone to earnestly explain how fighting in the desert over nothing is more important than responding to literally the exact circumstances that started two World Wars. How much of it legitimately comes down to securing transit of the world's most important energy supply and how much of it is simply habitual?

[Edited on December 24, 2018 at 10:06 PM. Reason : a]

12/24/2018 10:04:56 PM

We have no choice but to be the world police.

We can’t dump so much money into our military while having the biggest economy in the world and not end up policing the world. It’s impossible.

The real problem isn’t that we’re world police, it’s that we’re NOT world police. Rather than our military primarily being about stopping genocide or preventing biological or chemical or nuclear weapons from being used/developed, the military is just an arm of our diplomacy. Trump fights Iran in Syria to help Saudi Arabia, and suddenly he has a new line of credit and a major real estate project on KSA.

Really we should be stopping isis, destroying chemical weapons, fighting warlords in Sudan, not fighting and dying for just political whims.

12/25/2018 2:06:05 AM