American missiles fired at Syria

[Okrahoma]

@QuickSilver

Assad has used and continues to use C.W.'s

When you hear hoof beats, why assume zebras?

You are aware that there are official UN reports of chemical weapons (and, specifically, sarin) being used against Syrian government troops in the fighting?

[Ravenman]

@Okrahoma

You are aware that there are official UN reports of chemical weapons (and, specifically, sarin) being used against Syrian government troops in the fighting?

So, are you now starting 4/4 Truther movement?

Maybe you can get a lawyer or dentist to say that sarin bombs fall THIS way, not THAT way, to expose the big lie here.

[Johnny_Ace]

The terrorist theory just isn’t credible. If it was chlorine gas, maybe. Sarin has a short effective life span. They wouldn’t be storing it in a warehouse…unless you believe the Syrians have invented a ‘chemist bomb’ that mixes the ingredients as it explodes.

[elucidator]

Well, now, its common knowledge that the Iraqis perfected the mobile chemical/biological weapons lab, cleverly disguised as a pile of rusted tubing and old tires.

[DrDeth]

@Okrahoma

July 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry:

“With respect to Syria, we struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.”

October 2014, Kerry:

"… people nevertheless have been critical — one day of bombing versus the virtue of getting 100 percent of the chemical weapons out of Syria.”

January, 2015, Susan Rice:

“We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished. We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”

… but this Sunday …

Tony Blinken, former Deputy Secretary of State and Deputy National Security Adviser:

“We always knew we had not gotten everything, that the Syrians had not been fully forthcoming in their declaration”

So - was it Kerry and Rice that blatantly lied? Or is Blinken?

You dont think the Syrians could have gotten more?

[Okrahoma]

@Johnny_Ace

The terrorist theory just isn’t credible. If it was chlorine gas, maybe. Sarin has a short effective life span. They wouldn’t be storing it in a warehouse…unless you believe the Syrians have invented a ‘chemist bomb’ that mixes the ingredients as it explodes.

AFAIU, there is evidence of use of sarin gas (not chlorine) against Syrian government soldiers - see Jobar, Khan Al Asal and Ashrafiah Sahnaya incidents.

[Inbred_Mm_domesticus]

@spifflog

I’ve never heard of the Army Runway Corps, and even if there was one, do you envision that we’d land the 100 guys there for 12 hours or so, and then fly them out!

The attack was a signal pure and simple, nothing more. I was just clarifying that bombing a 1 million dollar easily repairable runway isn’t as effective as destroying infrastructure and jet aircraft.

I was responding to the general statement you made about destroying runways. I found it dubious given that efforts to this day are made to destroy runways and most major militaries have bombs for the purpose. I, possibly mistakenly, thought the Army Rangers were trained to capture and destroy airfields but I might have been wrong about that since I can’t find a cite saying anything specific.

The recent attack ordered by Trump has nothing to do with any of it because the goal wasn’t taking out Syria’s airforce or destroying the airfield.

[Ravenman]

@Inbred_Mm_domesticus

I, possibly mistakenly, thought the Army Rangers were trained to capture and destroy airfields but I might have been wrong about that since I can’t find a cite saying anything specific.

I think the term associated with the Rangers is “seize and secure” airfields, not “capture and destroy.” At least, that’s how I hear it described.

[elucidator]

It is good to be reassured that we have a bold and decisive leader in Il Douche. I remember from childhood, the words of Davey Crockett: Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.

Maybe that was Custer. Been a long time.

[spifflog]

@Inbred_Mm_domesticus

That has nothing to do with any of it because the goal wasn’t taking out Syria’s airforce or destroying the airfield.

Not to kick a dead horse, but I continue to be perplexed why posters think a large pothole (slight hyperbole) is more of a headache to a warfighter than destruction of fuel and repair infrastructure and damage to a complex aircraft that has precision machinery and avionics. Those buildings and aircraft will never be repaired.

The runway, if attacked would be useable within a day or two.

[elucidator]

One thing we can take to the bank: a firm statement of policy on Tuesday may very well be valid on Wednesday, Thursday is up for grabs.

[GreenWyvern]

@Okrahoma

AFAIU, there is evidence of use of sarin gas (not chlorine) against Syrian government soldiers - see Jobar, Khan Al Asal and Ashrafiah Sahnaya incidents.

The question is, who used sarin in 2013?

There is a convincing answer from Seymour Hersh, a very highly respected American investigative journalist. He was the man who broke the story of the Mai Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, and he’s investigated many other scandals over the years. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize among a number of other journalism awards. He detailed the manipulation and lies behind the WMD claims in Iraq, and was one of the first to write about the Abu Ghraib scandal.

He has many high-level contacts in the American military and intelligence establishments.

Here’s Seymour Hersh’s article about the 2013 gas attacks in Syria

Seymour M. Hersh · The Red Line and the Rat Line: Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels

His conclusion, based on solid and detailed facts, is that it was the rebels who used the gas, in an operation set up by Turkish Intelligence.

I don’t believe it’s any different this time.

[XT]

This is what The Guardian had to say about Hersh’s Red Line:

Last week the London Review of Books published an article by the respected Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, The Red Line and the Rat Line, in which he details the alleged involvement of the Turkish government with the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra in last August’s sarin attack in Damascus. Between 1,000 and 1,400 people are estimated to have died.

The US, Britain and other western governments have pinned the blame on the Syrian government; Russia has accused the rebels. Hersh describes this as part of a “false flag” operation designed to draw the US into a conflict with Syria.

In his 6,000-word article Hersh relies heavily on single, unnamed sources for each of his claims, and constructs a narrative in which the Turkish government was responsible for the largest chemical attack since the one carried out by Saddam Hussein on Halabja in 1988. But Hersh’s story is full of holes, and it brings the reliability of his sources and conclusions into question.

Hersh makes no mention of the munitions used on 21 August, something that is key to understanding the attacks. In an interview for Democracy Now! he states that the weapons were both homemade and not in Syria’s arsenal. Both these claims are wrong.

Two types of munitions were used on 21 August and are linked to the dispersal of sarin gas. Both were recorded in a report by the UN and the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and tested positive for signs of sarin. One was a Soviet-era M14 140mm artillery rocket, certainly not a “homemade” munition, and the second was a munition that was widely unknown.

Studying videos and photographs posted by opposition and pro-government sources has allowed researchers to piece together a great deal of information about these rockets. We know they are referred to as “Volcano” rockets and come in at least three sizes: 107mm, 122mm (as used on 21 August), and a much larger type based on a 220mm rocket motor. It is also clear that there are both explosive and chemical versions, as well as evidence of their use by the Syrian military from late 2012.

Seven issues to address

…

Firstly, sarin is difficult to make. Anyone who claims otherwise is oblivious to both history and chemical engineering. Germany, the US and the former Soviet Union took years to perfect the process. Its production requires a number of complex steps and the ability to handle highly dangerous chemicals at very closely controlled high temperatures and pressures. There is no evidence anyone has come up with any sort of streamlined method to manipulate the molecules to make sarin.

Second, quantity. Perfecting the process isn’t enough – there is a difference between making a spoonful and enough for the August attacks, which would have needed about half a ton. This assumes a scale only reached by big state production programmes. To put it in perspective, the one verified example of non-state production of sarin was the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. Their many millions of dollars, very large purpose-built manufacturing facility and highly qualified staff got them the ability to make single batches of perhaps 8 litres of short shelf life Sarin. The alleged Aleppo plant wouldn’t need to be the size of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in the US, but it would have needed to be closer to that than the size of a house.

Third is the choice of weapon. Of the panoply of chemical warfare agents available to modern science and engineering, sarin is one of the hardest to make. So why was this one chosen? Even its nerve agent kin, Tabun and VX, are arguably easier to produce; mustard or lewisite are easier and use less technology. Numerous toxic industrial chemicals which might “fly under the radar” of non-proliferation regimes could be used as weapons. So why pick the hardest?

Fourth, economics. To make this operation work it is going to take a lot of highly trained people, raw materials, and specialised equipment, as well as a facility. It would cost many tens of millions of dollars. When the rebel factions are so stretched for resources, does it make any sense to spend, say, $50m on a weapon of limited utility? Lavish expenditure must raise a paper trail somewhere; there would be order books and receipts. Let’s see them.

Fifth is logistics. You don’t turn precursor material magically into sarin: you need about 9kg to end up with 1kg of sarin. This stuff has to come from somewhere, but where? Hersh omits these details, as do most of the alternative narratives. It is simply assumed that things like phosphorus trichloride and thionyl chloride just get summoned up in vast quantities without someone noticing. Most commentators on this issue have also forgotten about something called conservation of mass. If you use 9kg of material to synthesize 1kg of sarin you end up with 8kg of waste, rather a lot of which is very dangerous, smelly and corrosive. This waste stream has to go somewhere, and someone will notice. There are also the logistics of getting a lot of sarin into rockets and getting those rockets from Aleppo to Damascus.

Sixth, concealment. How do you hide all of this? The building, the supply chain, the people, the money, and the very smelly waste stream. Where are they? They need to be concealed not just from the Syrian regime but from other rebel factions, western intelligence agencies, the Russians, and perhaps even your own people who might desert, get captured or say silly things on YouTube videos. There is deathly silence from Aleppo and we only find out about it from Hersh?

Lastly is the specificity of the product. There are important physical clues found in the traces of sarin at the impact sites of the 21 August rocket attack. One of these is the presence of hexamine, a chemical with no history of use in nerve agent production. But hexamine can be used as an acid scavenger, and thus its presence could be explained due to its use as an additive to the sarin. This idea has been reinforced by both the admission of the Syrian regime that they used hexamine as part of their formula, and by Syria’s declaration to the OPCW of an inventory of 80 tonnes of hexamine, specifically as part of their chemical weapons program. Surely, as an uncontrolled substance, they could have omitted it from their declarations. But they didn’t. Hexamine in field samples plus hexamine in Syrian inventories, plus an admission that hexamine was in their recipe, seems a compelling case for tying the Sarin in the field to the Syrian regime. How would an Aleppo-based rebel factory somehow come up with the same exact idea?

Taken cumulatively, all these points add up to a very high degree of improbability. Isn’t it more probable that the Sarin came from the people who confessed to having a Sarin factory, fired from areas controlled by the government 2km away from the impact sites, in munitions the government had been using since 2012?

There are, of course, lots of debunking articles on this, but figured I’d go with the Guardian.

[Okrahoma]

@XT

This is what The Guardian had to say about Hersh’s Red Line:

Since the incidents I cited involved use of sarin against Syrian government’s soldiers, the “debunking” would require adopting a CT that Syrian government attacked its own soldiers with sarin for some reason.

Not that Hersh is a reliable source. He is as fond of CTs as anyone. But the incidents I cited come from a UN report, not Hersh.

[XT]

@Okrahoma

Since the incidents I cited involved use of sarin against Syrian government’s soldiers, the “debunking” would require adopting a CT that Syrian government attacked its own soldiers with sarin for some reason.

Not that Hersh is a reliable source. He is as fond of CTs as anyone. But the incidents I cited come from a UN report, not Hersh.

I saw your link, earlier, and skimmed the report. Since you are just giving basically an entire report (I couldn’t find it on the UNODA website btw, but might just be a search problem), and then expect people to slog through the whole thing to reach your conclusion, you might want to consider identifying the parts you think are compelling to your case. I looked at the conclusion, and at best they say there is a small possible link, but that there aren’t enough facts to make a stronger case. As they say this about 9 different places and in a dozen or so different ways, I’m not seeing anything all that compelling. Obviously, if you think I’m missing something feel free to quote from it, or quote another source that analyses the report and reaches similar conclusions. From my perspective, it’s not all that much of a stretch to think the soldiers were contaminated either in the handling or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and without the proper protections. It wouldn’t surprise really anyone that Assad et al were so caviler with the lives of the common soldiers as to send them into an area they were (or had…the chemicals actually have residual effects that linger for quite some time) attacking using gas.

[up_the_junction]

@XT

This is what The Guardian had to say about Hersh’s Red Line:

There are, of course, lots of debunking articles on this, but figured I’d go with the Guardian.

But you didn’t. You wont get anywhere in critical thinking until you start to get the basics right.

This is a stated opinion piece - a discussion piece - by Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta. One’s a blogger, the other 'a life ‘long specialist’. You would imagine they both got paid twice for this job on Hersh.

And it is so ridiculously slanted s to be embarrassing outside a Fox news style bubble. Eaxmple, sure sarin is difficult to make - if you live in the 1950s and don’t have the assets of a state to hand.

Hersh or blogger …

[QuickSilver]

@Okrahoma

AFAIU, there is evidence of use of sarin gas (not chlorine) against Syrian government soldiers - see Jobar, Khan Al Asal and Ashrafiah Sahnaya incidents.

@XT

I saw your link, earlier, and skimmed the report. Since you are just giving basically an entire report (I couldn’t find it on the UNODA website btw, but might just be a search problem), and then expect people to slog through the whole thing to reach your conclusion, you might want to consider identifying the parts you think are compelling to your case. I looked at the conclusion, and at best they say there is a small possible link, but that there aren’t enough facts to make a stronger case. As they say this about 9 different places and in a dozen or so different ways, I’m not seeing anything all that compelling. Obviously, if you think I’m missing something feel free to quote from it, or quote another source that analyses the report and reaches similar conclusions. From my perspective, it’s not all that much of a stretch to think the soldiers were contaminated either in the handling or were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and without the proper protections. It wouldn’t surprise really anyone that Assad et al were so caviler with the lives of the common soldiers as to send them into an area they were (or had…the chemicals actually have residual effects that linger for quite some time) attacking using gas.

Well, I took the time to slog through the incidents that Okrahoma mentioned in the above link. The report clearly states that: 1) all evidence provided to the UN was by the Syrian army, 2) The UN was not able to confirm reports because they were not given access to some of the sites, 3) The sites that they were able to access had been contaminated by bulldozer mine removal operations, 4) Reports by various victims are conflicting and therefore inconclusive.

Is it possible that some rebel groups used improvised chemical weapons against Syrian soldiers? Sure, it’s possible.

But it’s foolish to insist that this therefore constitutes clear evidence that it was the rebel groups who used chemical weapons on 4/4.

[XT]

[QUOTE=up_the_junction]
But you didn’t. You wont get anywhere in critical thinking until you start to get the basics right.
[/QUOTE]

That was one of several links. But, rather than provide additional links that you didn’t request, what have YOU got, chief?

This is a stated opinion piece - a discussion piece - by Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta. One’s a blogger, the other 'a life ‘long specialist’. You would imagine they both got paid twice for this job on Hersh.

What was Hersh paid for HIS BOOK? Possibly one of the most ridiculous rebuttals I’ve ever seen around here…and I’ve seen you rebut things in the past, so it’s saying something. Again…do you have anything, outside of your opinion? Why don’t you cite some people who support Hersh, rather than this crap? A quick Google search will show you that such exist, yet you didn’t even bother.

And it is so ridiculously slanted s to be embarrassing outside a Fox news style bubble. Eaxmple, sure sarin is difficult to make - if you live in the 1950s and don’t have the assets of a state to hand.

And you base this ‘Eaxmple’ on, what, exactly? Or is ‘Eaxmple’ your word for ‘something I pulled out of my ass’? If so, check the smell next time. Again, a quick Google search yields plenty of links about the subject, including this one that actually talks about Hersh’s claim as well as this one…both from 2013. If you look for articles today you will find more saying it’s not that easy to do and corroborating the ‘Eaxmple’ you merely handwaved away with your opinion. Feel free to link to examples of how easy it is to make for Syria rebels in the war-torn countryside.

Hersh or blogger …

Or your completely unsupported snarky opinions. Man, you don’t even do SNARK well.

[Okrahoma]

@XT

I saw your link, earlier, and skimmed the report. Since you are just giving basically an entire report (I couldn’t find it on the UNODA website btw, but might just be a search problem), and then expect people to slog through the whole thing to reach your conclusion, you might want to consider identifying the parts you think are compelling to your case.

I told you which incidents to look at.

[Okrahoma]

@QuickSilver

But it’s foolish to insist that this therefore constitutes clear evidence that it was the rebel groups who used chemical weapons on 4/4.

Who insisted that?