did anyone think the US was going to risk bombing russian assets or risk pissing off russia? this was done with russias approval; we get okay from russia, warn them in advance, russia tells syria, everyone moves their equipment, and trump gets an approval bump.

nice and clean, easy peasy

[Edited on April 7, 2017 at 3:57 PM. Reason : lemon squeezy]

4/7/2017 3:57:18 PM

Not sure I'd say easy peasy. If that's true, or even if it seems true (but maybe not quite provable), once we have some more facts in, then the blowback is gonna be epic. Not even Trump could recover from that.

[Edited on April 7, 2017 at 5:57 PM. Reason : HR McMaster would have to be in on it he whole thing?]

4/7/2017 5:54:19 PM

And which set of facts are we going to believe?

4/7/2017 6:05:02 PM

If it somehow turns out they didn't substantially damage the operational capacity of the airbase and something in the mission design was responsible, that's a big deal.

If we did just spend $90M to do this and the only outcome was an emboldened Assad and Russia, that's going to be bad.

4/7/2017 6:19:59 PM

Most likely scenarios IMO:

1) Tillerson's remarks in Turkey basically made the Syrian government think they could do whatever they wanted. So Assad or one of his underlings ordered a gassing, knowing Russia wouldn't give two fucks.

2) A rogue element under Assad did it without Russia's knowledge and caught Russia off guard, hence they left us alone when we decided to bomb the airfield but will register their face-time complaints to save face with Assad.

3) Russia allowed Assad to do it to hand Trump a platform on which to look decisive, strong and to distract from all the Russian/Trump shit. This would make the possible Russian after-bombing to destroy evidence sensible from that standpoint.

4) Russian intelligence did it for the same reasons as 3 but didn't tell Assad about it. Same clean-up efforts afterwards.

5) US intelligence did it to further drive the US and Russia apart so that if, in fact, the Trump/Russia stuff is true, it can't be progressed.

[Edited on April 7, 2017 at 7:29 PM. Reason : a]

4/7/2017 7:26:24 PM

^ Are you talking about the gassing when you say so and so "did it"?.

4/7/2017 10:06:49 PM

yea

4/7/2017 11:10:05 PM

https://twitter.com/andrewbeatty/status/850443670805520384

So tillerson is saying the runway was intentionally not targeted. This seems like an odd strategic choice but I'm not a military person.

Any rationale for this? If we were sending in troops I could see leaving the runway in tact to land our own planes, but that doesn't explain this situation.

4/7/2017 11:47:02 PM

we all know who profits

http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/07/investing/syria-raytheon-tomahawk-missiles/index.html

Quote :

"Raytheon, the company that makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the air strikes on Syria by the United States, is rising in early stock trading Friday."

crude also up, by 2%

4/8/2017 1:06:49 AM

Quote :

"Any rationale for this? If we were sending in troops I could see leaving the runway in tact to land our own planes, but that doesn't explain this situation."

Only thing I can relate to in regards to this line of thinking is. if we can eliminate the facilities they have no need for the run way. Why waste missles on this area if it's that strategic of an airstrike.

4/8/2017 1:26:35 AM

^ yeah but if your target is an airbase, the one main thing an airbase needs to function is a runway... take out the runway and you've crippled what most of the things there are supporting...?

4/8/2017 1:38:41 AM

Quote :

"Surveying the airfield, American war planners developed a list of 59 targets: aircraft, hardened plane shelters, radars, an air defense system, ammunition bunkers and petroleum storage sites. One Tomahawk cruise missile was fired at each of the 59 targets, and the Pentagon asserted that each hit its mark. An additional missile aborted after launch and fell into the Mediterranean."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/world/middleeast/american-military-pentagon.html

4/8/2017 2:00:20 AM

Assad throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, 'oh he's using gas!'

4/8/2017 8:06:46 AM

From what I've read, TLAMs aren't really the best tool for destroying runways because they don't actually displace the concrete slabs in a way that makes them difficult to repair. It's really just a matter of filling in what amount to oversized potholes. So I guess that's why they targeted actual planes and infrastructure, rather than the runway itself.

4/8/2017 8:28:56 AM

^ive read similar but not from anywhere I'd consider an authority (only in comments and forums). That's an acceptable answer, if true, but I have a hard time believing it. Do you have a good link discussing it?

The argument I've seen has two facets: A) TLAMs aren't great at runway destruction, and B) runways aren't great targets because they can be repaired in a day or so, atleast repaired well enough for MIGs to take off (which are apparently pretty adept at taking off on crappy runways).

To which I say: there are pictures of one of those silly looking plane bunkers where it's obvious a TLAM punched through the roof and exploded nearly inside, like it looks like it punched through 10'+ of earth and concrete. Why wouldn't it be able to penetrate 5+ feet into a runway and detonate (its 1000 lb warhead). Sorry but common sense suggests that would be a pretty epic crater.

And yea if you have your entire work crew, their equipment and materials right on hand you could repair a crater or three in a day, but if you blow holes all up and down that runway I'd say your are looking at more like a week (minimum) to get everything patched up.

I'm no expert here and am willing to defer to someone with more insight, but when I saw satellite images I expected to see craters every 500' going down the runway. Then there is the huge range in other damage being reported, anything from 6 aircraft (not acceptable) up to 20. And reports planes were taking off less than 24 hours later (still unconfirmed as far as I can tell). I dunno, it all feels kabuki to me.

4/8/2017 8:59:39 AM

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/why-firing-tomahawk-missiles-at-syria-was-a-nearly-usel-1794113103

This link has a better discussion, but I still think people are making light of how long it would take to grade out 30 craters in a runway.

4/8/2017 9:50:54 AM

Quote :

" It still blows my mind that a peaceful handover of chemical weapons was somehow considered a failure."

cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuz a whole lot of people just died from a chemical weapon fired by the same dude ?? remember the almost only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades adage????

i doubt the people give 2 fucks that syria "almost" handed over their chemical weapons

Quote :

"And yea if you have your entire work crew, their equipment and materials right on hand you could repair a crater or three in a day, but if you blow holes all up and down that runway I'd say your are looking at more like a week (minimum) to get everything patched up"

very true... my thoughts would be, what difference does a week really make? In the grand scheme of things a week isn't changing much. Also, given the "explosion" on the right side of that picture 3rd from the bottom, how many missles would it take to "blow holes all up and down that runway? People are already upset at the 90 mill it cost to fire 60 of them, imagine if we added on another 15-20 to destroy the runways for a week or two.

4/8/2017 10:49:51 AM

how have none of you learned not to immediately accept claims of chemical weapons, why are you agreeing it was assad so quickly with no verification?

4/8/2017 12:19:36 PM

^ can you explain? Seems like it's widely reported the gas was delivered via air strike. That's gonna be Assad, Russia, or America.

What interest would Russia have in plotting this? I don't think trump has the reach or credibility to plan this. Assad has the clearest motive it seems like.

4/8/2017 3:01:50 PM

https://cmgajcluckovich.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/lk040917_color.jpg

[Edited on April 8, 2017 at 3:05 PM. Reason : Link]

4/8/2017 3:05:17 PM

^^ UN reports have verified other groups using chemical weapons in Syria in the past, Assad is not the only person with chemical weapons

4/8/2017 6:32:15 PM

Just remember we are lied to most when it comes to matters of war. I sure as hell don't trust anything I am being told, especially now that the drums of "regime change" are beating.

4/10/2017 8:00:22 AM

Who's worse here, Assad or ISIS? I mean our government has to know what happens if Assad falls. It's an awful position to be in for us, because on the one hand, ISIS is bad for the entire middle east, and could we imagine what would happen if they had Assad's stockpile of weapons? On the other hand, Assad is really bad for his own people, and his ties to Iran could also be problematic in the future.

4/10/2017 8:58:21 AM

Quote :

"Who's worse here, Saddam or al-Qaeda? I mean our government has to know what happens if Saddam falls. It's an awful position to be in for us, because on the one hand, al-Qaeda is bad for the entire middle east, and could we imagine what would happen if they had Saddam's stockpile of weapons? On the other hand, Saddam is really bad for his own people, and his ties to Syria could also be problematic in the future."

What if I told you.......

4/10/2017 2:00:45 PM

removing saddam was a massive mistake, i don't think i understand your point

4/10/2017 2:18:59 PM

Quote :

"^ can you explain? Seems like it's widely reported the gas was delivered via air strike. That's gonna be Assad, Russia, or America. "

An air strike on a chemical weapons stockpile would have had similar results. Have the spent rocket casings surfaced in pictures or video yet?

4/10/2017 4:35:39 PM

Why isn't anyone talking about Trump's violation of international and US law? Assad is bad, but he doesn't pose any threat to our country. I'm so sick of wasting money being at a proxy war while the country crumbles back home.

This attack didn't even make sense. How bad would a tomahawk be if 59 of them could leave an airbase operational? What is the goal? Obama's red line made no sense from the start and that is why Obama himself backed off from it.

All of the major networks have "experts" who own stock in the military-industrial complex slobbering over the attack. Fake news at its best.

"You better kill children the nixe way, or else!" -America

4/11/2017 2:42:12 AM

remember that time Gabbard met with Assad in Syria without talking to anyone about it first?

4/11/2017 8:14:57 AM

^^its almost as if they are trying to start a war to justify the $600 billion/yr corporate welfare war machine. when you spend that kind of money making hammers every problem looks like a nail

4/11/2017 8:33:23 AM

*beatsunc SCALDING hot take alert!!!!!!!!*

4/11/2017 8:57:01 AM

Tulsi is on fire right now. Got the coveted endorsements from Richard Spencer and David Duke.

[Edited on April 11, 2017 at 10:23 AM. Reason : Or coveted]

4/11/2017 10:22:40 AM

Howard Dean and the rest of the corporate democrats are almost completely irrelevant now. They've been found out and are now vowing to take down Tulsi for being an independent thinker and challenging the military-industrial complex that has propped them up for so long.

4/12/2017 5:27:16 AM

Are we officially at war with anyone right now?

4/14/2017 5:34:49 PM

Who to believe?

Quote :

"Assad says chemical attack ‘100% fabrication’ Sammy Ketz and Rana Moussaoui | AFP | Published — Thursday 13 April 2017 DAMASCUS: Syria’s strongman Bashar Assad has accused the West of fabricating a suspected chemical weapons attack that prompted an unprecedented US missile strike, in an exclusive interview with AFP in Damascus. The embattled leader, whose country has been ravaged by six years of war, said his firepower had not been affected by the attack ordered by US President Donald Trump, but acknowledged that further strikes were possible. He also insisted his forces had turned over all their chemical weapons stocks in 2013 and would never use the banned arms. His comments came in an interview conducted at his office Wednesday, his first since a suspected chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. “Definitely, a hundred percent for us, it’s fabrication,” he added of the incident which killed 87 people, including 31 children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. “Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack,” said Assad, who has been in power for 17 years. The suspected attack on Khan Sheikhun, in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, comes in the seventh year of the country’s brutal war, which has killed more than 320,000 people and displaced over half the population. Assad said evidence of the suspected chemical attack came only from “a branch of Al-Qaeda,” referring to a former jihadist affiliate among the groups that control Idlib. Images of the aftermath, showing victims convulsing and foaming at the mouth as desperate medics working with meagre resources struggled to treat them, caused global shock waves. But Assad, who appeared relaxed, said it was “not clear whether it happened or not, because how can you verify a video? You have a lot of fake videos now.” “We don’t know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhun. Were they dead at all?“ “Who committed the attack if there was an attack?“ Syria’s government signed the Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to hand over its stockpiles in 2013, under a Russian-brokered deal. The agreement averted US military action after a sarin attack on a rebel area outside Damascus that killed hundreds of people and was blamed by much of the international community on Assad’s government. 'No strategic value' Damascus denied responsibility, but agreed to turn over its stockpiles, while continuing to wage war against opposition forces. In recent months, Assad’s army has clawed back significant territory, including capturing the one-time rebel bastion of eastern Aleppo. Key to the turnaround has been support from ally Russia, which launched a military intervention to bolster Assad in September 2015. The Syrian president said his forces had no military reason to hit Khan Sheikhun, describing it as having no strategic value and being far from the current battlefront. “This story is not convincing by any means,” he said. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has begun an investigation into the Khan Sheikhun incident, but Russia on Wednesday blocked a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Syria cooperate with the probe. And Assad said he could “only allow any investigation when it’s impartial, when we make sure that unbiased countries will participate in this delegation in order to make sure that they won’t use it for politicized purposes.” He insisted several times that his forces had turned over all chemical weapons stockpiles under the 2013 deal. Expecting more US attacks “There was no order to make any attack, we don’t have any chemical weapons, we gave up our arsenal a few years ago,” he said. “Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them, and we have never used our chemical arsenal in our history.” The OPCW has blamed Assad’s government for at least two attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving the use of chlorine. The Khan Sheikhun incident prompted the first direct US military action against Assad’s government since the war began, with 59 cruise missiles hitting the Shayrat airbase three days after the suspected chemical attack. Assad said his Russian allies “didn’t warn us... because the Americans called them maybe a few minutes before.” And he said more US attacks “could happen anytime, anywhere, not only in Syria.” But he insisted his forces were unaffected by the US strike. “Our firepower, our ability to attack the terrorists hasn’t been affected by this strike.” Trump’s administration initially took a hands-off approach to Syria, with Assad raising the possibility the new US president could even be a “natural ally.” But he said the American strike showed Washington was “not serious in fighting terrorists.” International efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis have proved fruitless, with successive rounds of talks producing no result. The conflict has evolved into a complex multi-front war involving the regime, rebels, jihadists and Kurdish forces, as well as the Russian and Turkish militaries, and a US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group."

Now I am not saying I believe him, but he really had nothing to gain from doing so.

Yes, a chemical attack was carried out, that has been confirmed by lab tests conducted on survivors in Turkey and UK. But, who did it? An international investigation hasn't even been carried out yet.

Didn't one of the attacks from a few years ago which was also pinned on him turn out to have been carried out by the rebels?

I detest him, and nothing would make me happier than seeing him vaporized off the face of the earth; I am just talking about the facts here vis-a-vis who did the attack.

4/15/2017 3:33:56 AM

video footage of the 2013 nerve gas attacks seemed to indicate that they were carried out by rebel forces.

the only scenario I could imagine where Assad's forces would willingly use chemical weapons would be if they had completely run out of other munitions. That's not out of the realm of possibilities considering how dependent Assad has become on barrel bombs, but I haven't read anything indicating Syria had chemical weapons that could be deployed via airstrike in the first place. Our own government is reporting that two planes were deployed on this particular bombing run, but only one plane is being blamed for the chemical attack. That seems to lend a lot of credence to Assad being unfortunate enough to bomb a rebel chemical weapons stockpile. Why would you deploy limited chemical weapons unless it was in a location where there was significant benefit in saving the local infrastructure, but then bomb the same area with traditional munitions?

I would find this entire situation a lot more believable if evidence were being plastered all over social media showing remnants of a chemical weapons warhead, similar to last time.

4/15/2017 10:11:23 PM

Correct, 2013 was a confirmed false flag attack and our politicians are straight up lying to us once again. Anyone who asks for an investigation "should not be in congress". Shoot first, ask questions never.

4/16/2017 9:26:21 AM

gas used in attack made in syria, france confirms

?http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39717894

4/26/2017 11:37:35 AM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_politics/2277791.stm

Reminds me of the last time we needed an excuse to destabilize the middle east further.

4/26/2017 12:23:39 PM

Didn't Syria lose a lot of its weapons to rebels?

4/26/2017 8:02:07 PM

US coalition in first downing of Syrian army plane
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40322666

Quote :

"A US-led coalition fighter jet has shot down a Syrian military plane in Raqqa province, the US has confirmed. The SU-22 fighter bomber was engaged by an F/A-18E Super Hornet after it had dropped bombs near the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the Pentagon said. It is the first time in the Syrian conflict that the US-led coalition has shot down a Syrian jet. Syria condemned what it called a "flagrant attack" that would have "dangerous repercussions"."

Syria and Iraq are completely FUBAR



(click link to see map if red x above)

6/19/2017 4:09:40 AM

You can basically merge all of that into two colors:

Blue: US
Red: Russia

6/19/2017 2:51:16 PM

Its actually the most stable its been in years.

6/19/2017 3:03:09 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/20/middleeast/boy-beheaded-in-syria/index.html

6/21/2017 3:48:47 PM

so it looks like we are finally going to give up on replacing assad

7/7/2017 3:43:44 PM

Good. That was the most illogical policy since the last US foreign policy that crossed my mind.

7/7/2017 6:24:21 PM

bump...

4/13/2018 8:59:37 PM

Oh my, we went after Syria.

4/13/2018 10:29:39 PM

I hope they don't kill any Russians tonight.

4/13/2018 10:50:18 PM

had to use those nice, new, SMART missiles

4/13/2018 10:58:10 PM

Bombs Over Damascus doesn't roll off the tongue quite the same way Baghdad does.

4/13/2018 11:05:24 PM