Syria's Assad used chemical weapons on his own people

[Rubin Farr]

I didn't think he really had the balls to be another Saddam Hussein, but it's time to take him out, hopefully with the support of the UN Security Council.

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/13/191395435/report-u-s-europe-conclude-syria-used-chemical-weapons

[awepittance]

I'd be really surprised if the UN was intimidated or stupid enough to let the US launch a war because of 'chemical weapons' again. I mean it's possible that the UN is still scared as shit of the US. Ironically the UN never approved our actual invasion, just the weapons inspections. So we still illegally invaded Iraq opposing UN authority.

Funny how Wesley Clarke was told one day after 9/11 that Syria was one of the countries we were going to invade among Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya

I have a question though, because outside of the framework of the Iraq war runup propaganda about 'weapons of mass destruction' what difference does it make if he uses chemical weapons or just guns? Because it wasn't really until then that the US started to make a stink about certain types of weapons, and they only did that to come up with an excuse to invade Iraq.


Russia and China aren't going to vote 'yes' on the UN security council, so it won't pass regardless. Say all you want about them, but they are smart enough to not give the US another free pass to colonially take over another arab country.

I remember asking a frend of mine around the time of 2003 Iraq war runup why NPR had turned so 'pro war' and he responded with 'do you mean national pentagon radio'?

[doublename]

Is invasion really on the table for this administration? It seems more likely that they'll play it like the Soviet-Afghan war --

providing material support to the rebels, but no troops on the ground. Fighting other people's civil wars hasn't worked out well for us.

 

Edit: Indiscriminately distributing weapons hasn't been much better, but whoever's in the White House in 2030 gets to worry about that.

[awepittance]

I'm betting on a NATO lead invasion. That worked before to get the international community involved in toppling Libya

[CharlesWatkins]

sarin is pretty fucked up, basically raid for humans, makes you convulsive, shit/piss/vomit, induces nightmares, etc

 

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/sarin/basics/facts.asp

[awepittance]

It's puzzling to me also how this became a 'red line' for Syria, when we totally ignored when Saddam used chemical weapons in the Iraq/ Iran war and also on his own people, chemical weapons that we provided to him.

Since when did this become a non negotiable 'red line' ? Since we started taking over the middle east for our own imperialistic gains?

[Guest disparaissant]

i was just going to say something similar. somewhere around 90,000 dead, and the 150 or so killed by chemical weapons are where we draw the line? give me a break.

[eugene]

it's additive, there wouldn't be talks of red lines without tens of thousands of dead.

[SR4]

it's additive, there wouldn't be talks of red lines without tens of thousands of dead.

 

*remembers the numerous other far more violent conflicts in other less strategically beneficial parts of the world*

[delet...]

You do realise that this is propaganda bullshit. If any chem weapons were used it was by the US backed mercenaries, who were given the crap by the US for obvious reasons. They've been banging on about assad chem weapons for ages, hoping that it'll gain traction, letting it soak into people's comprehension of that conflict. I don't even need to read the link to know that it is not worth knowing about.

 

Good grief guys. whatever happened to the whole 'fool me once, fool me twice..'. shame on you. "oh but it's npr deleter, npfuckingpr" .. fuck off, more like NSA PublicRelations.

 

//takes obligatory few days off watmm after his kook out. heh ;-]//

[Guest chunky]

Yee-haa!!! Let's take 'em all out. How many headshots are we gonna be gettin'? Wee!!! Boy howdy!!! MONSTER KILL!!!!!

[doublename]

You do realise that this is propaganda bullshit. If any chem weapons were used it was by the US backed mercenaries, who were given the crap by the US for obvious reasons. They've been banging on about assad chem weapons for ages, hoping that it'll gain traction, letting it soak into people's comprehension of that conflict. I don't even need to read the link to know that it is not worth knowing about.

 

Good grief guys. whatever happened to the whole 'fool me once, fool me twice..'. shame on you. "oh but it's npr deleter, npfuckingpr" .. fuck off, more like NSA PublicRelations.

 

//takes obligatory few days off watmm after his kook out. heh ;-]//

Link? Not calling you a liar, but I've seen similar claims about Turkish mercenaries in the Russian media and some typically dubious Infowars reports to the same effect. There are mountains of bullshit about Syria at the moment.

[awepittance]

I'm honestly a little stunned that any critically thinking person at this moment is taking US claims about Syria seriously enough to be backing a military strike.

[Rubin Farr]

No one is talking air strike yet, or ground troops. They are considering arming the rebels (hello it's been 2 years already?) and enforcing a no fly zone, like they did pre-Iraq invasion. I hope it doesn't come to another ground invasion, I think a bombing campaign directly at Assad's airbases, support structure, and fuck bomb his palace while you're at it would make a big impact.

 

I know there's not much difference between killing thousands of people with conventional weapons, and 150 with sarin, but apparently to Obama and Congress that's one toke over the line.

[awepittance]

you mean arming islamic fundamentalist rebels? Aren't those the same people we've been fighting a war against for the past decade? How is this not just beyond comically fucked up

 

I hope the rebels are civilized enough in Syria to rape Assad with a metal pipe on camera like the Libyan rebels did for Qadafi

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfh-2dbpAL0

[lumpenprol]

Yee-haa!!! Let's take 'em all out. How many headshots are we gonna be gettin'? Wee!!! Boy howdy!!! MONSTER KILL!!!!!

first time I've laughed (other than in disbelief) at a chunky post.

 

I'm having difficulty searching for how few shits I give.

 

Does Syria have some nice historical monuments? I'm betting they do, some sort of hanging gardens of babylon or ziggurats of ur or some such.

 

Sucks they might get damaged.

 

Assad's face on monumental signage was cuter than Hussein's.

 

Are there refugees? Maybe Israel can benefit from a brain drain. Unless they're too racist.

 

Hey, wonder what's going on in Egypt these days?

 

Those are about the extent of my "deep thoughts."

[awepittance]

coming soon to an Arab country near you

I'm more excited for this than I was for Man of Steel or Star Trek Into Darkness *buys popcorn*

[Rubin Farr]

Gulf War III, coming soon to a theater near you, starring Sylvester Stallone.

[Guest chunky]

No one is talking air strike yet, or ground troops. They are considering arming the rebels (hello it's been 2 years already?) and enforcing a no fly zone, like they did pre-Iraq invasion. I hope it doesn't come to another ground invasion, I think a bombing campaign directly at Assad's airbases, support structure, and fuck bomb his palace while you're at it would make a big impact.

 

Well they were talking about sending in ground troops 100 years ago when Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Palestine. This scheme is nothing new. It is a religious and racial conflict with a deep history.

 

A bombing campaign that removes Assad will also remove the Syrian state, so what you will see is all these various rebel factions break up into fragmented groups, and things will get worse and worse for the Syrian people thanks to Western intervention. Now it's like 9/11 every day. Later, it will be hard to buy basic supplies or receive electricity or gas. Life will be primitive and brutal even in the modern cities. There's a very clever Israeli military historian called Martin Van Creveld who has named this kind of battle 'non-trinitarian warfare'. If only John McCain had read Creveld or even Sun Tzu! Haha. I guess there's another force of gravity working on McCain and others like him though. Bribes? Fame? A place in history? Fundamentalist Christian beliefs like Jerry Falwell? AIPAC?

 

Then this sort of thing comes later:

 

Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.

• On pre-1967 clashes with the Syrians, in a 1976 interview with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)
• http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan

And this sort of thing too:

 

We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

• From an address given to Technion University students (19 March 1969), a transcription of which appeared in Ha'aretz (4 April 1969), quoted in The Question of Palestine (1980) by Edward Said, p.14

The notion that America is doing this for the benefit of Syrian people is a lie and fraud, a complete inversion of truth.

[delet...]

It's all about eretz israel in the end. Plus turkey gets some too, maybe a chunk of iran.

[SR4]

 

No one is talking air strike yet, or ground troops. They are considering arming the rebels (hello it's been 2 years already?) and enforcing a no fly zone, like they did pre-Iraq invasion. I hope it doesn't come to another ground invasion, I think a bombing campaign directly at Assad's airbases, support structure, and fuck bomb his palace while you're at it would make a big impact.

 

Well they were talking about sending in ground troops 100 years ago when Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Palestine. This scheme is nothing new. It is a religious and racial conflict with a deep history.

 

A bombing campaign that removes Assad will also remove the Syrian state, so what you will see is all these various rebel factions break up into fragmented groups, and things will get worse and worse for the Syrian people thanks to Western intervention. Now it's like 9/11 every day. Later, it will be hard to buy basic supplies or receive electricity or gas. Life will be primitive and brutal even in the modern cities. There's a very clever Israeli military historian called Martin Van Creveld who has named this kind of battle 'non-trinitarian warfare'. If only John McCain had read Creveld or even Sun Tzu! Haha. I guess there's another force of gravity working on McCain and others like him though. Bribes? Fame? A place in history? Fundamentalist Christian beliefs like Jerry Falwell? AIPAC?

 

Then this sort of thing comes later:

 

Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.

• On pre-1967 clashes with the Syrians, in a 1976 interview with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)
• http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan

And this sort of thing too:

 

We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

• From an address given to Technion University students (19 March 1969), a transcription of which appeared in Ha'aretz (4 April 1969), quoted in The Question of Palestine (1980) by Edward Said, p.14

The notion that America is doing this for the benefit of Syrian people is a lie and fraud, a complete inversion of truth.

 

 

 

i can't tell you in all honesty how much it disgusts me to have agreed with you on some things.

 

i'm not going to declare it, but you know what you are, and most anyone here with a shred of sanity knows what you are.

 

edit: oh and just because i'm a bitter dick, Kaiser Wilhelm II was a fucking idiot that couldn't manage a McDonalds.

[Guest chunky]

i can't tell you in all honesty how much it disgusts me to have agreed with you on some things.

 

i'm not going to declare it, but you know what you are, and most anyone here with a shred of sanity knows what you are.

 

edit: oh and just because i'm a bitter dick, Kaiser Wilhelm II was a fucking idiot that couldn't manage a McDonalds.

 

 

Well, I want to know the truth, and the government are liars. It bothers me to see my peers be deceived. I don't have any ideological problems against a Jewish state. But I disagree with the way it is being conducted.

 

For one we are borrowing money to fight these wars. So western states are paying for wars for Israel, by borrowing from banks that are run by Israelis. So we are paying taxes to borrow money from Israelis to fight wars for Israelis. If we fight wars for Israel, then Israel should be paying us, not binding us by old fashioned usury. Israel has a right to exist, but we should be paid for helping them, not forced to pay them!

 

Then, I'm also tired of reading about these wars in falsely moralistic terms. If we are fighting a war for Israel, then we should be doing it openly and honestly, not pretending it's about human rights, chemical weapons, biological weapons, democracy, democratic capitalism, or any of these lies. Sun Tzu said that all war is based on deception. Was he right? Even to the point where the army and people doesn't know why it is fighting the war? If we are truly moral, we will say "yes, we are fighting a war to expand the Jewish state of Israel". Some people who are not familiar with Christianity might be confused by this. But the creation of a greater Israel is also a large part of the Christian religion, especially for fundamentalists/Bible literalists like George W Bush and his Pa.

 

Also, I'm surprised by the number of organisations and institutions that repeat these WMD style of lies, when the falsity is blatantly clear. The BBC is one example that never discusses honestly the reasons for war.

 

Finally I can't see how these lies can be sustained much longer. With the Iraq war it was said to be all about oil, and now it's clearly not exactly about oil but an ancient religious conflict, the truth can't be covered up much longer. It will become clear to large numbers of people that voting for either side in an election won't be able to stop the wars from happening. In that case, domestic opposition will start to rise against these wars that takes a different path than before. Why does USA homeland security have so many APCs and guns and bullets? Why do the conspiracy looneys like Jessie Ventura have actual footage of empty new soviet style prison camps and funny looking coffins? Why is USA focusing resources on "domestic terrorism"? In that case won't it be the opponents of a war on Syria/Iran/Russia/China that will start to be labelled as domestic terrorists, even if they are innocent non-violent people who are merely saying what is happening?

 

To prevent a civil war in the USA, it might be better to openly come to a deal with Israel and say "hey, we'll help you achieve your goals of a large Jewish state, but we want more say over how we achieve this goal. For a start, you can pay the money to us. And we don't want to lie about the reasons.". We should accept the fact that the Jewish state will be there. But we mustn't accept some of these poor tactics that are not in our interest. For example Sun Tzu says it is better to take the state whole, so why ignore him and destroy the Syrian state? It will severly harm the Syrian people, when our stated aim is to protect them. We can't even debate this openly unless we are honest about the true aims of the war.

[Rubin Farr]

I thought we were borrowing from the Chinese to fight for the Israelis, also so they could hack our systems to death, then smile and shake hands lol.

[Guest chunky]

I thought we were borrowing from the Chinese to fight for the Israelis, also so they could hack our systems to death, then smile and shake hands lol.

 

Nathanael Rothschild went into business in Indonesia recently with the Bakrie family (prominent Indonesian ruling class type of family), few months later the Bakrie's name showed up in the newspapers saying they were in massive debt. Then some Chinese banks came to the rescue and had some loans to bail them out etc.

 

www.rothschild.com

 

Rothschild’s long-standing presence in China dates back to 1838, and we were one of the first business institutions from the Western world to re-establish relations after 1953.

Our offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong give us direct access to the Chinese market. Our locally based team of advisory bankers commands an in-depth knowledge of the country’s economic development and the challenges facing its industries.

 

Through many years advising China’s multinationals, state-owned and private enterprises, we have developed an exceptional understanding of the local regulatory and market environment. Our team is skilled at bridging the cultural gaps that sometimes exist between the managements of foreign and local companies.

 

Senior bankers lead every assignment from start to finish, ensuring that all clients benefit from Rothschild’s intellectual capital and global network of contacts and industry sector expertise.

 

In the wider north Asia region, we advise on cross-border transactions concerning Korean companies through our strategic partnership with Samsung Securities, and on those concerning Japanese companies through our strategic partnership with Global Advisory Japan.

Our notable assignments include advising the acquisition by Geely Auto of Volvo, the merger of China Netcom and China Unicom, the sale of Lehman Brothers’ Asian assets to Nomura, and Rusal’s IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

 

What am I trying to say? Well, it's thanks to the prominent banking families in the first place that we have these wonderful banks (and I think they've done a lot of good in the world like reducing global starvation etc). When America or England or Indonesia borrows money from a Chinese bank, it's a fact that there is Israeli involvement and influence in the Chinese banks. It's undeniable, when they even state it on their official websites. You can find Rothschild family interviews online and they are openly proud to have been there in the founding of Israel and are slightly embarassed to have streets there named after them.

 

China is culturally distinct and sovereign over its own political affairs but it's current financial system has been built up with the close co-operation of foreigners. Is it a bad thing? It's a good thing. China is doing well now. Everyone knows that China was divided only 60 years ago in a bitter civil war that split the country into two competing ideologies. It was very terrible when Communists decided that all religious belief wasn't to be tolerated and the buddhist monastries and monks were to be burned down. Cultural revolutions etc. Nasty stuff. And before then the European empires were trying to carve up China and share her. It's lucky for China that they can be a peaceful country now. After China lost her spiritual belief she transformed herself into a country of finance, factory, and commerce.

 

Recently Chinese government changed over to a new President. Sadly there was a lot of competition there over who could take the role. Apart from Xijinping there was another candidate called Bo. Poor old Bo is a very traditionalist sort of Communist, jingoistic, racist, super-patriotic or whatever. He wouldn't have been a very good candidate for the sort of country that China is planning to become in the future, which is based on finance, factory, materialism and commerce. China praise Mao in public but they don't want or need another Mao right now. They need a business-minded leader. So anyway it turned out that Bo's wife had a British man murdered, and sadly Bo and his wife were arrested on charges of corruption. On the official BBC website you can read some quite funny stories about this couple. Yes, on the BBC not on conspiracy websites. The BBC has said that when Bo's wife was on trial, it wasn't actually her but a double. A body double went on trial and went to jail for her crimes. A conspiracy website said that? No, the official BBC website. It's a terrible shame for a presidential candidate to go to prison for murder. Who was the victim of the murder? He was a business intelligence gatherer who worked for Haklyut. What is Haklyut? I don't want to explain it but you can read a good history here: http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Hakluyt It's basically a company that helps bankers to do business in foreign countries. I don't want to draw further conclusions about that particular situation but it all seems very sad and tragic. Next time you hear about a country borrowing money from China though, you will have to wonder where it's really coming from, and even ponder the mysteries of how China decides who gets to be President.

[joshuatxuk]

The world is simply waiting to see if the Syrian civil war fizzles out. All the line in the sand talk about chemical weapons or factions like Hezbollah supporting Assad or the Kurds and jihadists supporting the Syrian opposition serve as mere talking points in Western media. Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon all have different agendas and greatly varying relations with the U.S. but they are all quasi-united in simply keeping the war from either spilling over tremendously in their backyards. It's disgusting that such a bloodbath is being observed and waited out by the world's leaders but not at all shocking.

 

Libya was simply an "easier" intervention than Syria will ever be. Despite the decades of poor and hostile relations with many others, Qaddafi had far better relations with the West and International community in the last 10-15 years than Syria ever has (especially Italy, where the bombing campaign launched from) and yet he died at the hands of a revolution directly assisted by NATO. Realpolitik of the most absurd caliber is the bottom line in the Middle East and Syria is no exception.