This is logic, Shodan. You might as well ask him to prove water is wet. What you want him to do is to give you impact data of various artillery and the range in which fatal concussive blasts would be to the average person vs. data on wind conditions spreading types of chemical weapons. You ask him for something he cannot readily provide and pretend that proves your point. Its a feeble debate. We all know chemical weapons like sarin gas travels on the wind and you have to be within a certain closer proximity to a bomb to be affected by the impact. There’s no debate here except in your own mind where you’re winning :rolleyes:
On topic, the admin’s bluff and forcefulness in getting rid of Syria’s CW’s has made them a signatory to the CW treaty. It made Assad admit he has weapons, and brought in a recalcitrant Russia to put their credibility on the line in helping to dismantle these weapons. Its nothing short of a terrific victory for Obama and diplomacy and shows those people still stuck in the last decade that you don’t need to randomly bomb countries to show you’re tough and get things done. Obama did more to make the world safe in a couple of years of secret negotiations with Russia than conservatives could do with almost a whole decade bombing two different countries.
I’m hoping Obama will ignore Netanyahu and try to broker a deal with Iran next. As their presidents have shown us, they can be just as night and day as us, and pigeonholing Iran into some unhelpful and stupid “Axis of Evil” without recognizing their mostly pro-West population is incredibly short-sighted and dangerous. We should be talking to Iran, without preconditions like Candidate Obama said, and come to an agreement where they can have a nuclear plant but submit to inspections for the lifting of sanctions. Just think of Ahmadinejad as Iran’s George W. Bush: an international joke and an embarrassment to the country.
Since you do not dissagree with what I wrote there is no need to search for a cite.
But here’s some reading if you are truly interested in understanding something about this.
Why Chemical Weapons Are Different
BEN W. HEINEMAN JR.SEP 9 2013, 3:01 PM ET
That topic is not being debated or argued Shodan. You don’t disagree with the premise. The request for proof is more a diversion to get around the fact that my overall argument is valid.
It looks to me as though when you don’t have time for your trademarked wall of words, you simply duck and run.
You made a factual claim.
You have failed to support it with evidence.
We can now ignore everything you post until such time as you actually support your claim.
Your overall argument is horse doo-doo. 99% of it is three-posts-in-a-row slobbering all over yourself about how wonderful Obama is and how his latest fuck up is really a deeply laid plan to achieve something-or-other that you can’t quite explain.
The trouble being that now you come up with a (very rare) factual assertion, which is supposed to show why Obama is the bee’s knees and we should all be sticking our tongues so far up his ass that we floss the back of his teeth. And you can’t prove the assertion, even slightly.
Which suggests that your opinions are based on other, unsupported ideas as well.
So you don’t get to tell me whether or not I disagree with you. I can make my own mind up about that, thanks just the same.
Your demand for a cite on a common sense fact has not been accompanied by your disagreement or rejection of it with an explanation as to why you think I stated something incorrect shows you have nothing on me.
Do you have anything from common sense to an in depth analysis that was I stated is incorrect?
If you think a small rocket delivered explosive device can kill more people over a wide spread area without a direct hit as the same size rocket launched chemical weapon thing bring it to the discussion.
Did you read what I posted earlier or were you too busy making that Obama-Love argument that you have chosen to fall back on.
Methinks Tomndebb will not express a view for the record here. I’ve put my point out there and no one has made an argument or explanation as to why my sub-point in a bigger argument is invalid.
I would ask that T&D ask for a cite from thus forum where 99% of my posts are…well here’s what T&D appears to be defending:
So T&D could you kindly ask Shodan to cite three-posts-in-a-row by me where 99% of what I write is slobbering all over myself how wonderful Obama is?
I will accept his apology when he can’t find any such thing.
Methinks Tomndebb will not express a view for the record here. I’ve put my point out there and no one has made an argument or explanation as to why my sub-point in a bigger argument is invalid.
I would ask that T&D ask for a cite from this forum where 99% of my posts are…well here’s what T&D appears to be defending:
So T&D could you kindly ask Shodan to cite three-posts-in-a-row by me where 99% of what I write is slobbering all over myself how wonderful Obama is?
I will accept his apology when he can’t find any such thing.
Here’s more opinion on the matter. When Rubin cites the same point I made must it be that he provide some scientific proof every time he says this:
"“Modern weaponry, while it’s grown more lethal, has also grown more precise,” says Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official now with the American Enterprise Institute. But chemical agents disperse to affect large numbers of people and “can produce horror for a lifetime.”
Now I suppose we’ll hear that Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise institute is making the - very rare factual assertion - to make Shodan’s hysterical assertion that its because Rubin wants all to think “Obama is the bee’s knees and we should all be sticking our tongues so far up his ass that we floss the back of his teeth.”
The record shows it was not me that ducked and runned
I’ve been challenged of sorts to prove that the ***zone of lethality ***of a small rocket delivered artillery canister loaded with Sarin gas is larger than the B]*zone of lethality *[/B from the same sized artillery rocket loaded with a high explosive conventional shell.
So we’ll have to prove it with a controlled scientific experiment.
What we’ll do is get permission to use the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range In Nevada for our experiment. Then build on the designated site a residential dwelling of similar construction to those found in Ghouta, Syria. The test dwelling will be located 500 yards from the outside perimeter of a conventional high explosive artillery rocket’s zone of lethality.
The base line will be set by firing a test rocket fired under controlled wind and weather conditions and loaded with a normal explosives used by the Syrian Army. The test dwelling will be located by measuring to a safe distance from the impact point.
However we have permission to fire a chemical weapon delivered on a similar rocket only once because of environmental concerns of Sarin gas dispersal into the atmosphere.
The Sarin weapon will match what was used in August during the attack on Ghouta.
We have two volunteers that will determine the result of this experiment. They will be given a choice on which test firing they will spend the night in the test residence. They will not have gas masks or protective gear to simulate the conditions the residents of Ghouta faced that night last August.
Tomndebb and Shodan, our volunteers are now being asked which night they will chose to spend at the test house. The conventional shot or the chemical shot.
I wonder which one they will choose.
If they choose Sarin, it will take five days before it is safe for recovery efforts to begin:
My understanding of what John Mace wrote was that our recent military history is filled with unilaterally bombing. I was pointing out that it is not the case at all. I wasn’t saying anything about supporting and not supporting rebels.
Whether the FSA are our friends is not important. What is important is that as this war goes on the rebels that are part of the FSA are becoming more distinct from the part that is al-Qaeda.
We have law enforcement for them. We are doing something about all the terrorist threats to the USA no matter where they come from and we use different tactics depending on the location.
Syria is a failed state. The regime is not in anything like control of huge swathes of the country. It’s chaos.
I think this weekend shows we are at war with al Qaeda.
I was just stating how we’re involved. It’s factual. Just because you don’t care about it doesn’t make it less factual.
1 million people is a lot of spillage. Anyways, the affect of the war on its neighbors and our allies makes it our business. You do not have to agree to that of course, but it’s a mistake to think it’s not our business.
Bombing in Asia has been remarkably effective. Terrorism comes to our borders because of ideology and has little relationship with our bombing.
I’m not going to get into one of those never ending line-by-line debates, so I’ll just hit on the key points of error in your analysis:
I don’t accept that it’s a failed state, but if it is, you are suggesting that we make it even more of one. That makes not sense whatsoever.
Nope. We went after a specific guy, al-Libi, who we claim was involved in the 1998 embassy bombing. The other raid was not successful, but it, too, was going after high-value targets. We’re not just going after random groups that claim to be affiliated with al Qaeda. These guys have specifically targeted Western interests. We’re not seeing that in Syria.
For some reason, I can’t find this article on line, but from today’s San Jose Mercury news:
This has nothing to do with Syria or what is going on in Syria right now. But, weakening Assad’s regime could very well turn Syria into another Yemen, Afghanistan or even worse, since Syria isn’t some backwater country with no military assets to speak of.
John Mace, my only issue was with you claiming that it was not a threat and none of our business. Richard Parker actually summarized the error in your logic quite well just two posts or so after the one I originally posted to you.
Your evident preference for isolationism doesn’t mean you get to claim your opposition is because Syria is not a threat and none of our business. That’s what got me to make a post. Although I find your point-of-view disagreeable, there is nothing to argue in it. How does somebody argue with “I don’t care about these people?” or with “something non-specifically bad will happen if we aid the rebels”.
There is something to argue in the categorical statement that it’s not a threat. There is something to argue in the statement that it’s none of our business. Both claims are false.
We’re at war with al-Qaeda and our principal tactic is to take out the leadership. We’ve been doing that for years. I personally support this war wholeheartedly no matter how long it takes or where we end up having to fight it.
Syria is a failed state. It’s a failed state where al-Qaeda is gaining strength. A side has to win to make it less so and we can support either side to bring the war to a quicker close. The rebels are preferable because the government has already demonstrated its failure to govern and all our allies in the region prefer the rebels.
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Al-Qaeda IS the rebel side or at least part of it. I don’t see how supporting the rebel side by annoying Assad helps us get rid of Al-Qaeda.
Korea was all about stopping communism. That conflict was, at the very least, a proxy war between Communist China and the US. Whether it was worth it to us to fight that war, I honestly don’t know. All of Korea would now be as desperately poor as NK is, and we’d have (more) troops stationed in Japan to contain that country.
Afghanistan is only a security threat to the US in the sense that it was a failed state that sheltered al Qaeda interests that wished to do harm to us. A Taliban run Afghanistan, without the sheltering of ObL isn’t a security threat to the US. But let’s remember that there really isn’t much a country called Afghanistan-- it’s always been a tribal entity where the central government exerted limited control, at best, over large parts the country.
Syria is (or was) a relatively stable country with its own regional interests that, while obviously not aligned with the US, was not in direct conflict with the US. The civil war is being fought between two sides (or who knows how many sides) with neither side obviously aligned with the US. I agree that we need to be guided by what we can realistically do or not do, but I don’t agree that Syria is any more important to us that Afghanistan, and Afghanistan isn’t particularly important to us any more. If we are to be completely practical, and to look at things through the eyes of realpolitik, we’d probably be best keeping Assad in charge. Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know.
I don’t think a lot of that is as obvious as you seem to think, but it doesn’t matter. If Korea was China’s proxy, then Syria is Iran’s for much the same reasons, only probably better reasons for Syria.
Syria is more complicated than Korea insofar as the opposition is composed of some groups who would benefit the US and some who would harm the US. But our national security interest in the outcome is not thereby diminished, it is just harder to effectuate by any particular policy.
Well, I certainly wouldn’t argue that Syria couldn’t be a threat to the US sometime in the future, depending on how the civil war plays out. But they aren’t a direct threat now, and as you and I both seem to agree, there is little the US can do to influence the outcome so it’s rather a moot point.
I’m more afraid of the unintended consequences of getting involved in that war than the consequences of just staying the ef out. Especially since we don’t have a sanction from the “international community”, the UNSC, NATO, our closest European Ally, or the American people for getting involved.