# Did signals from Tillerson and Trump lead to Assad's use of nerve gas? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 4, 2017, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753 "2017-04-04T18:39:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/21 "2017-04-05T08:44:05Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > No reason? They’re trying to suppress a violent rebellion; lowering morale and breaking spirits by killing civilians is a tried and true method. Things like this actually strengthen resolve to fight. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/22 "2017-04-05T08:55:26Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Things like this actually strengthen resolve to fight. Yeah, not really. Not after six years of war. Or do you have some cite that proves otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/23 "2017-04-05T09:06:04Z")
Besides, it’s a way to test the United States. If the U.S. responds, they adjust their strategy accordingly. If the U.S. doesn’t respond - which is what they’re betting on - then they know they have a free hand to do whatever they want. Geopolitics 101. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/24 "2017-04-05T09:14:19Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Yeah, not really. Not after six years of war. > > Or do you have some cite that proves otherwise? Do you have a cite that it does? The blokes with AK’s at the frontline, doing the fighting, aren’t affected by such an attack. It’s little children and other non-combattants who’s morale might be broken. Any fence sitting close male relative would join up immediately. I guess that if they were clearly loosing such a thing might add to actual loss of morale, instead of strengthening it. Idlib, however, is a large swathe of land that is certainly not a lost cause. Just a few days ago was a new reasonably succesful offensive on government positions there. If there is a lost cause in Syria, it’s Daesh. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/25 "2017-04-05T09:19:45Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Besides, it’s a way to test the United States. If the U.S. responds, they adjust their strategy accordingly. If the U.S. doesn’t respond - which is what they’re betting on - then they know they have a free hand to do whatever they want. Geopolitics 101. Or it is to prompt the U.S. in an even more active role in Syria, to come to the aid of Idlib. Propaganda warfare 101. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/26 "2017-04-05T09:21:46Z")
So what this interchange boils down to, in essence, is that you think Assad and Putin are monsters and I think Al Qaeda are monsters. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/27 "2017-04-05T09:30:04Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > When have the Russians ever avoided killing civilians? :rolleyes: Neither has the US. Or Israel. And before you say it; yes nor has Pakistan. The Russians have some of the best long range aviation in the world. They can flatten any target and kill thousands with conventional weapons if they wish to. And get nothing except a blurb on the backpages. Drop chemical weapons, and you kill as many or less as you would have conventionally and start a major strategic crises. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/28 "2017-04-05T09:33:46Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > So what this interchange boils down to, in essence, is that you think Assad and Putin are monsters and I think Al Qaeda are monsters. They’re all monsters, but Assad and Putin have better weapons. > [@AK84](#): > > : > Drop chemical weapons, and you kill as many or less as you would have conventionally and start a major strategic crises. As I said: it’s a test. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/29 "2017-04-05T09:57:49Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > They’re all monsters, but Assad and Putin have better weapons. Whenever I watch footage of the war I am always surprised at the amount of harware the rebels have. Tanks, bmp’s, howitzers, rockets, mortars galore. Plus the afore mentioned TOW anti-tank missiles. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/30 "2017-04-05T10:10:55Z")
That’s nice. It still doesn’t compare to what they’re facing. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/31 "2017-04-05T10:54:30Z")
Who should decide the longer-term status of Assad? Saudis and Qataris? Americans and Frenchmen? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/32 "2017-04-05T12:22:01Z")
In a perfect world? The Syrian people. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/33 "2017-04-05T13:06:14Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > In a perfect world? The Syrian people. So the world is imperfect. Who should determine what happens? Stop sending signals to Assad to use chemical weapons. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/34 "2017-04-05T13:34:13Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > In a perfect world? The Syrian people. So the world is imperfect. Who should determine what happens? Stop sending signals to Assad to use chemical weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/35 "2017-04-05T13:35:38Z")
I don’t think my country is sending any such signals, but just in case it is, I agree that it should stop. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/36 "2017-04-05T14:08:54Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > And why would the Russians use Chemical weapons? No foreseeable tactical advantage and massive strategic fallout. Ditto for Assad. > > Indeed its for the same reasons many experts doubted that Assad had carried out the 2013 strike either. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. 😛 So, your contention is that the numerous cited attacks where Assad (and now Assad and his Russian friends) have used chemical weapons against their civilians are all made up? And that the only supposed attacks were in 2013 and now, and not pretty much continuously as my earlier Wiki cite indicated? And that ‘experts’ back this up? Why don’t you trot out some cites for these experts doubting all chemical attacks in Syria. It should be interesting seeing who is saying this sort of thing, since the evidence seems overwhelming that chemical weapons have and continue to be used in Syria. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/37 "2017-04-05T14:51:59Z")
Thought I’d add [this](http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/middleeast/syria-sarin-chemical-weapons-explainer/index.html) article from CNN on the recent gas attack: > [@](#): > > (CNN)Horrifying images and video show civilians – including children – struggling to breathe, foam coming from their mouths as they appear to die of asphyxiation after an airstrike in northwestern Syria on Tuesday. > > Syria’s military has denied using chemical weapons and blamed rebels for the carnage, but activists say the regime is responsible for a chemical attack which killed at least 70 people. Russia, meanwhile, has blamed the deaths on a Syrian airstrike on a “terrorist” ammunition depot. > > It’s not yet confirmed what chemical agent was involved in the attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib province. But early indicators point to the release of a nerve agent like sarin. > [@](#): > > Does the Syrian regime have nerve agents? > The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is supposed to have given up its chemical weapons stockpile, but not everyone is convinced. > > Before the war began in 2011, Syria had research and production facilities near Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Latakia and Hama that turned out hundreds of tons of chemical agents a year, according to the US-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which catalogs the world’s arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. > > Syria never signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, the current international treaty against the use of poison gas, but it did sign the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned the use of chemical and bacteriological warfare, according to the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW.) > > Experts from the agency were part of a UN team that found “clear and convincing evidence” that sarin was delivered by surface-to-surface rockets “on a relatively large scale” in the Ghouta area of the Syrian capital Damascus in August 2013. > [@](#): > > Could rebel forces have chemical weapons? > > Russia’s defense ministry said on its Facebook page that a Syrian airstrike had hit a “terrorist” ammunition depot in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun. > > The ministry said “terrorists had been transporting chemical munitions from this largest arsenal to the territory of Iraq.” > > Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mikdad similarly told al-Mayadeen TV that Syria had given the OPCW and United Nations information in recent weeks on the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group transporting toxic substances into Syria, state-run news agency SANA reported. > [@](#): > > But Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons specialist and managing director of Strongpoint Security, said the Russian version of Tuesday’s events was implausible, in a piece published on citizen journalist website Bellingcat. > > All the nerve agents used in the Syrian conflict so far have been binary chemical warfare agents, he said, which are mixed from different components within a few days of use. This is done because of the difficulties of safely storing and handling agents such as sarin. > > Even assuming that large quantities of both sarin precursors were located in the same part of the same warehouse (a practice that seems odd), an air-strike is not going to cause the production of large quantities of sarin," Kaszeta wrote. "One of the precursors is isopropyl alcohol. It would go up in a ball of flame. A very large one. Which has not been in evidence. > > “Another issue is that, if the Syrian regime actually did believe that the warehouse stored chemical warfare agents, then striking it deliberately was an act of chemical warfare by proxy.” > > UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also dismissed the idea that rebel forces were responsible. > > “I’ve seen absolutely nothing to lead us to think that it is anything but the regime,” he said. “All the evidence I have seen suggests that it was the Assad regime who did it in a full knowledge they were using illegal weapons in a barbaric attack on their own people.” ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/38 "2017-04-05T16:27:37Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Besides, it’s a way to test the United States. If the U.S. responds, they adjust their strategy accordingly. If the U.S. doesn’t respond - which is what they’re betting on - then they know they have a free hand to do whatever they want. Geopolitics 101. The problem with this view is that the US has already failed the test. After the initial gas attack the US did nothing. The US could have intervened decisively against Assad at that time, but now Assad has almost won the war and the US can not intervene without risking striking Russian assets. The US is not going to war with Russia over Syria and everyone knows it. Russia already has sanctions against it because of Ukraine and you can’t play that card twice. There is nothing for the US to do that could effectively punish Assad. The US is just a spectator in this situation. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/39 "2017-04-05T17:49:10Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Um…I don’t think we do overestimate that, really. I think a lot of people try and underestimate the US’s impact on the rest of the world. The US has a huge impact on what does or doesn’t happen in the world. In Syria, our impact is from basically being hands off, and that impact is that Assad is still in power and the civil war is grinding on, and that Assad/Russia is essentially free to do what he wants wrt using weapons like gas attacks, direct and deliberate attacks on hospitals, use of things like barrel bombs and the like. If the US had decided all the way back in 2013 (or at the start of the civil war) that this was unacceptable AND we were willing to follow through on it then…well, it might have been as much of a cluster fuck as Iraq (though I have to think Obama et al would have done a better job than Bush and his merry men did), but Assad would have stopped doing those things one way or the other. > > Seriously, think about what you are saying here in the context of the US. We aren’t involved because we CHOSE not to be involved. We haven’t had an impact because, again, we CHOSE that. We certainly could have gotten as involved as we liked, and if we had it would have had a decisive impact, whether good or bad. No other country, not even Russia had the choices and options that the US did or still does. And when stuff like Assad and Russia do what they have been doing happens, it kind of is on the US that we stood by and let it happen. Not many other countries bear the same level of responsibility for something like this clusterfuck since really no other country could act decisively…and chose not to. We did get involved, though; just without lasting effect. We negotiated a comprehensive [agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Syria%27s_chemical_weapons) for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons productions facilities and stockpiles. We even carried out a lot of the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons ourselves. Smart people at the time [described](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=706562) it as “an unqualified success,” but that agreement doesn’t seem to have persisted in force, and now nobody even seems to mention it. Your CNN link vaguely describes it as a “Russian proposal” and makes it sound like no one thought much of it even at the time. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2017, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753/40 "2017-04-05T18:20:29Z")
They should use more civilized weapons like depleted uranium, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-signals-from-tillerson-and-trump-lead-to-assads-use-of-nerve-gas/783753.md?page=3)