Meanwhile in Iraq & Syria

[Okeefenokee]

Oh for fuck sake.

You think a youtube video is proof positive of anything?

So now you're back to "only a youtube video".

All the first hand testimony of doctors treating the victims - meh.
All the first hand accounts of the villagers themselves - meh.
All the forensic evidence supplied by Turkey who examined and treated victims - meh.
The first hand observations of reporters who visited the site - meh.
The collective wisdom of the Western intelligence apparatus - meh.

Just a youtube video. And one that dares to question the sterling character of Bashar al-Assad, a man who totally does not have a history of being a serial WMD user on his fellow Syrians.

Right on, bro.
Solid case.

AFAIK, he doesn't have that reputation in fact. Only unfounded allegations that are never solidly confirmed.

[Okeefenokee]

Is it possible that Syria doesn't have widely-distributed MOP gear? Where does that fall in the priority list with water and dying of the pox?

So, we're gonna believe that they have a chemical weapons program, but not the mopp gear to protect their soldiers from it?

[Okeefenokee]

Seymour Hersh reports

the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles.
Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the US could invade and overthrow Assad. «By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria». 
Hersh didn’t say whether these «arms» included the precursor chemicals for making sarin which were stockpiled in Libya, but there have been multiple independent reports that Libya’s Gaddafi possessed such stockpiles, and also that the US Consulate in Benghazi Libya was operating a «rat line» for Gaddafi’s captured weapons into Syria through Turkey. So, Hersh isn’t the only reporter who has been covering this. Indeed, the investigative journalist Christoph Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013, «Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria» and reported, on the basis of very different sources than Hersh used, that «Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry». 

I believe this is a reprint of older writings by Hersh
https://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress. ... our-hersh/

car accident imminent.

[Okeefenokee]

The odds their intelligence is wrong is quite small.

Gulf of tonkin
throwing babies out of incubators
yellow cake
saddam's wmd's
russia hacked the election

You should stay away from casinos.

[Okeefenokee]

"When something doesn't make sense, it's probably nonsense." - me

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." - Donald Rumsfeld.

not helping your case with a quote from the guy involved with an invasion based on fake reports for WMDs that didn't exist.

[Okeefenokee]

It's good to see old members posting. DBtrek, Kath, Smitty, Bjorn, etc.

If I had known that all we needed to do was to get Trump to bomb someone and all my old friends from DCF would should up again I would have pushed for it sooner

shit, beat me to it.

[Okeefenokee]

It's good to see old members posting. DBtrek, Kath, Smitty, Bjorn, etc.

If I had known that all we needed to do was to get Trump to bomb someone and all my old friends from DCF would should up again I would have pushed for it sooner

It was this president finally doing something resembling presidential. If he's going to be commander in chief instead of toddler in chief, I'll get behind him when he's doing things right. I always said I would. Nothing has changed.

all he had to do was launch an attack on a country on the other side of the world. well played donny. well played.

[Okeefenokee]

It's good to see old members posting. DBtrek, Kath, Smitty, Bjorn, etc.

If I had known that all we needed to do was to get Trump to bomb someone and all my old friends from DCF would should up again I would have pushed for it sooner

It was this president finally doing something resembling presidential. If he's going to be commander in chief instead of toddler in chief, I'll get behind him when he's doing things right. I always said I would. Nothing has changed.

Fuck that. I would prefer we did not bomb them. Stay out of foreign entanglements! I mean our meddling in the middle east since the early 90's has went SOOOOOOOO well for us and all. Now we hit Russia's ally. Not a great move IMO. Cold War 2.0 incoming and all because of a damn pipeline that S.A. wants run through Syria but the media will never talk about that little nugget.

this guy must have been paying attention for the past ten years. others.......

[Okeefenokee]

It was this president finally doing something resembling presidential. If he's going to be commander in chief instead of toddler in chief, I'll get behind him when he's doing things right. I always said I would. Nothing has changed.

Either I'm losing it or you are.

Not sure.

it's not you. loons gonna loon.

[Okeefenokee]

No. I amsaying.. if it were sarin, the responders in that video would also be dead. It's more likey chlorine, assuming that video is credible at all.

And chlorine exposure would support the Russian claim that they hit a rebel ammunition dump containing chlorine. The rebels, after all, have been using chlorine as a chemical weapon for years now.

That's just taking the video and photos at face value. I have no idea when that footage was taken, the circumstances, or really anything about it. People are throwing some youtube videos in my face and acting surprised I don't believe the IC.

Get real.

And the responders in that photo were an NGO. They have funding for mop gear. They also have a storied history of making shit up.

You're right, then, that if it's chlorine that would lend more credibilty to the Syrian/Russian narrative. The Wikipedia link I posted earlier, mentions several cases of the Syrian Army being the target of chlorine gas attacks. However, if Assad did not honor the handover of chemical weapons, or if he ordered the manufacture of some later on, that would not be any sort of surprise either. Punishing the civilians who support (or who he thinks supports) the rebels, would also hardly be out of character.

Yet none of the above means you, as Americans, or my country, or the "international community" needs to invade Syria and depose Assad. I do want him toppled, and I do support those Danes and Kurds who illegally choose to fight either in the Rojava commune or the FSA. But it's their fight. One they most likely will lose, given that the FSA has no important ally left and the Kurds can no longer hope for significant gains in any peace talks following the Russian-Turkish detente.

toppling middle east governments leads to nothing good. nothing. get with the program.