It's WMDs all over again!

I will just leave this here.

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Already read it! :slight_smile:

I don’t know - the whole thing does seem suspicious to me.

I just wish the freaking war would end.

How disappointing is it that only the Daily Mail and InfoWars know something’s up. Everyone else just ate it up.

Donald Trump ordered the airstrike without fully verifying that Assad was behind the attack.

Even if all of the evidence were to point to Assad, that doesn’t mean he was behind it. As deception is an essential ingredient in war.

It’s just a really bad situation with a lot of suffering. Maybe Donald was genuinely moved by the pain he saw in the photos and acted rashly. But he added to the suffering. Syrian State media put the death toll at seven including four children. Though, not a word from them can be believed.

As I understand it, the philosophy behind Obama’s approach was to deescalate tensions and anger. And give things time. Lots and lots of time.

If we destroy the Assad regime, Isis will try to fill the vacuum. If not Isis then someone else. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of armed groups operating in Syria.

On more than one occasion, we provided arms to factions that later turned against us.

It’s just too complicated. If we push one button, three other buttons could pop up. Even worse ones.

Nice knowing you guys! I might get a ticket to Syria.

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They used to have a saying in the Royal Navy: “don’t take the King’s shilling if you can’t take a joke!”

Translated: “don’t take the Donald’s dollar if you want a predictable ride!”

Helluva time to join up :frowning:

see the good side: you’ll probably get to practice your Russian if you take a walk by those military bases they have there :slight_smile:

One missile strike alone will not change Syria. So what’s the American plan? https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/one-missile-strike-alone-will-not-change-syria-whats-american-plan/

This question is to the point.

Paul Wood wrote:
“President Trump’s missile strike on Syria seemed as determined to stick it to President Obama as to the Assad regime. The initial statement from the White House on the Sarin gas attack that prompted the strike had more words of condemnation for Obama than for the Syrian ruler. In the matter of airstrikes, as in other things, it is important to Trump to be the un-Obama. But one night of missiles is not a decisive blow. Beyond the cratered runways, the Syrian battlefield is little changed. What is the American plan? What’s next?”
(Ibid.)

The unit I was planning on joining was supposed to deploy to Europe!

Ну ладно, it’s too early to tell, to where I’d be going. :confused:

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“Groupthink, and a lack of proper skepticism, is something that we’ve seen many times before as the American news media watches an administration step to the brink of war.
Most notoriously, perhaps, that was true in the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the start of a long disaster there.”
Perspective | The media loved Trump’s show of military might. Are we really doing this again? http://wapo.st/2nnGRwx?tid=ss_tw

I agree.

Peter Hitchens is pretty devastating this morning!

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk

"…Now we have definitely moved from being a post-war world to being a pre-war world. Madness and folly are loose again.

Consider first that early on Friday morning the United States Navy launched 59 cruise missiles on behalf of Al Qaeda.

If this is not bad enough for you, note that the President of the United States did not even bother to pretend that he was seeking United Nations cover for what he did.

Note next that in the same week our Prime Minister, Theresa May, made a duty visit to pay homage to the medieval despots of Saudi Arabia, who kindly buy our warplanes and bombs, and are currently using them to savage effect in Yemen.

And President Trump was playing host at the White House to the head of Egypt’s military junta, General el-Sisi, whose security forces undoubtedly massacred at least 600 protesters (probably many more) in the streets of Cairo in August 2013.

And then mark that the pretext for this bizarre rocket attack was an unproven claim that President Assad of Syria had used poison gas.

Yes, unproven. The brutality of Sisi and the Saudis is beyond doubt. They didn’t use gas, but our leaders’ outrage at Assad’s alleged gas attack looks a little contrived if they keep such company.

Also what happened to the rules of evidence? Many people have written, spoken – and now acted – as if the charge was proven. Why the hurry?

Now, Mr Assad is not a nice person. I have been writing rude things about his bloodstained and wicked regime for years. But he is not insane. He knows that the use of poison gas is the one thing that will make the USA intervene against him.

They have said so. He is currently winning his war against Islamist fanatics, with conventional weapons. He had even finally got the USA to stop demanding his dismissal.

Five days before the alleged attack – five days! – America’s UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, announced: ‘Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out.’

So why would he do such a thing, and throw away all his victories in a few minutes? It makes no sense of any kind. As you ponder this, can I explain something about the place where the gas attack is said to have happened?

No independent Western journalist could go there. He or she would be killed or kidnapped within hours.

Any report which comes from that region is filtered through people who you never see in the film that does get out. I have met men like them on my travels. I would not want to offend them. These are the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, alias the Al-Nusra Front, alias Al Qaeda, the Syrian ‘opposition’ which we in the West have been supporting for several years.

Yes, that’s right, the people we have been helping are not Liberal Democrats or Girl Guides or Quakers.

No, they are the same movement which destroyed Manhattan’s Twin Towers…"

It does make you think…

That’s the point. The main antagonists to Assad are fundamental islamist rebels… other than ISIS. If Iran and Russia are unwilling to force assad out diplomatically, then we are either looking at more chaos, a ground invasion, a long term occupation, or the rise of more islamic extremism.

There are absolutely no good answers here… but one thing that is clear: Trump has no real mandate or plan on this issue. The neocons that he stacked his cabinet with (just like every other special interest group with power) can play him like a fiddle and get him to go along with anything.

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“…Now we have definitely moved from being a post-war world to being a pre-war world.”

I don’t know if it is a justified feeling, but I got very nervous after reading about these missile strikes the other day. I started to get the feeling that we really are in the pre-war world. If so, this is not the pre-WW2 world, where there is some great evil and we are getting closer and closer to the time that we will be forced to confront it. This is the pre-WW1 world, where our own stupidity is causing us to sleepwalk into a conflict that has no real reason and purpose. I feel like we have pushed the ‘Auto Drive’ button on our car and fallen asleep, except we are not in a self-driving car and all we have done is activate the cruise control, but we don’t know the difference because we were too distracted with other things to read the manual.

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This might seem like a fatuous point, but I do wonder whether something like WW1 would be possible in the internet age?

I mean, if millions - literally - of British people could have gone on to twitter and tell General Haig in plain English exactly what they thought of him, it might have given even him pause for thought before sacrificing another 200K young men to win 100 yards in some Belgian field?

And any dumb or pointless war would quickly attract a Downing Street petition demanding immediate ceasefire - which would kind of undermine the government’s entire credibility if it were signed by, say, 80% of voters…

Emma Graham-Harrison wrote:

In rebel-held parts of Syria, the attack was met with relief that it might mark an end to chemical attacks, but little hope that it would bring an end to death or suffering.

“I am reading now that this strike is to make Assad not use chemical weapons any more,” said activist Abdulkafi al Hamdo.

The message from that, he said, was that the government could “go ahead with using barrel bombs, vacuum rockets, cluster bombs, phosphorus weapons and any kind, just not chemical weapons”.

Syria nerve agent attack: why it made sense to Assad Syria nerve agent attack: why it made sense to Assad | Bashar al-Assad | The Guardian

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“…The message from that, he said, was that the government could “go ahead with using barrel bombs, vacuum rockets, cluster bombs, phosphorus weapons and any kind, just not chemical weapons”…”

And Chlorine gas. But not Sarin. Sarin is over the red line.

The urbane lawyer has moved out of the White House now. The new resident is a pistol packin’ sheriff who shoots wildly from the hip. The next attack could well be on North Korea - which could result in a nuclear counter attack…on Japan.

Be afraid, Yutaka babes. Be very afraid.

“And Chlorine gas. But not Sarin. Sarin is over the red line.”

We learn something every day! President Al-Assad does too :wink:

"…North Korea has warned it is ready for war and can defend itself with ‘powerful force of arms’ after the U.S. deployed an armada of warships to the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang said there would be ‘catastrophic consequences’ to Washington’s ‘outrageous actions’ after the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its battle group was dispatched to the region for US-South Korea war games.

‘This goes to prove that the U.S. reckless moves for invading the DPRK have reached a serious phase,’ said a spokesman for the secretive nation’s foreign ministry. ‘The DPRK is ready to react to any mode of war desired by the U.S,’ he added.

It comes after China moved 150,000 troops to its border to deal with possible North Korean refugees amid fears President Donald Trump may strike Kim Jong-un following the surprise US missile attack on Syria last week…"

This is getting out of freaking control! :-0

North Korea has some nuclear warheads and missiles capable of hitting South Korea and Japan - and they are ruled by a fat psychopath who kills even his own family members at the drop of a hat…

I would be pretty worried if I lived in that part of the world right now!

The good news is with the North Korea/USA conflict: both countries have smart, level headed, diplomatic heads of state.

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:slight_smile:

In fairness, I don’t think the Donald would have his own uncle and half-brother whacked…