It wasn’t an argument at all.
As to your OP, it will likely be the most minor of footnotes on either of their legacies. With a full on civil war producing massive deaths, casualties and refugees why should history give a shit that a smaller percentage were killed by chemical weapons?
The statistical significance of Syrian civilians killed in the civil war by chemical weapons versus conventional weapons should be how many (per artillery shell) and at what production cost ($) per strike to the Assad regime as well.
To clarify my point lets say over the full three years of war only ten (100 pounds) of CW artillery delivery devices were fired with the intent kill and terrorize an entire populated area versus 10,000 (1,000,000? pounds) of conventional explosives delivered by missile-type weaponry. And then assume the hundred pounds of CW method kills per ten fired rounds 500 humans plus their dogs and cats and livestock. And the 100,000 rounds of conventional kills only ten humans per fired round.
Now if you reversed them and did the math you could see the significance and the horrific difference if the Assad regime did not have to worry about international red line drawn over the use of CW. and he had many tons of the CW in his stockpile.
Correction to previous post:
And the 10,000 rounds of conventional kills only ten humans per fired round
A) you just made up a bunch of numbers
B) chemical weapons are used only in certain circumstances so you can’t just do some straight conversion calculations.
C) I still don’t think a theoretically lower death count in a conflict with a rather high actual death count is going affect many people’s legacies.
What do you mean chemical weapons are used only in certain circumstances? They are not supposed to be used at all under any circumstances. That is why the civilized countries in the world ban them. If there were no public stand agsinst their use - Syria could kill more citizens cheaply and with no damaged infrastructure.
I mean that they are useful only in specific military/tactical situations.
But that’s the point of this whole thread - they were used, and Obama couldn’t do anything about it. Putin could, and Putin’s deal involves continuing to have the Russians sell conventional weapons to the Syrians so they can kill lots of people. The deal makes no difference in the number of people Assad kills.
Obama wanted a deal where fewer people would be killed, but he couldn’t bring it about. Putin wanted a deal where Russia can sell arms to Syria and more people will thereby be killed. That’s another of the reasons why it is so ridiculous to consider this a masterful deal. Assad will kill lots of people, just as he has always done. Obama couldn’t stop that, and Putin doesn’t want to stop that. So the deal that was struck involves Putin getting what he wants - selling arms to the Syrians and lots of Syrians dying - and Obama not getting what he wants - lots of Syrians are going to be killed (and Putin looks strong and capable and Obama looks weak and ineffectual).
I would have thought any idiot could see that, but apparently not. As CarnalK mentions, you are simply making up figures, but even those fictions do not affect the main point - the deal Putin put together involves Assad killing just as many people as if no deal were in place. The only difference is that Assad has lots more Russian-supplied weapons to kill people with conventionally. So he’s going to, and has been, doing that.
Hizbollah (who are fighting on behalf of Assad) are continuing to plantconventional bombs and kill rebels. You think those people are any less dead because of this “deal”? So far, somewhere north of 100,000 people have been killed, and I don’t think it is much of a comfort to them to know that most of them were only blown up or shot.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - I hope you aren’t going to claim that chemical weapons attacks have ceased in the Syrian war. Because, you know, theyhaven’t.
Are they useful as a terrorist tool? And more so than conventional artillery?
On 04-12-2014 at 02:58 PM** I wrote:**
On 04-12-2014 at 03:33 PM **Shodan wrote ** this response:
This response is what undermines Shodan’s and other’s entire argument. It is not true that Obama couldn’t do anything about it. And Obama stated he preferred Congress’ approval but would take military action with or without Congress and there is no reason to believe Obama would not have done, had Putin not reversed his previous position and decided to cooperate in whatever way it took to rid Syria of the CW arsenal.
The fallacy of Shodan’s argument is that Obama had just begun making the case for Congress while at the same time Putin surprised everyone and literally quickly agreed to the offer that Kerry put in public for a way for Assad to escape US military air strikes as punishment for using CW on his own people. Obama had been pressing Putin on doing that for several months.
A US President can do just about whatever military action that he decides is necessary for sixty days before Congress can shut down the funding. The air strikes on Assad’s regime would have been over in a few days. There is no reason to believe Shodan’s argument has merit because Obama very well could have done the military option had it become necessary to do it. When Assad signed the CW treaty and agreed to the UNSC Resolution that is what is going on right now and that shows that Obama did something about the CW attack. The threat of CW is being removed from the civil war as we speak.
Sure, they might be Depending on the shelf life, how transportable and how easy to deploy they are. You want to make up a bunch of stuff about that too?
He was using the chemicals for many months as a standard military tool. Dozens of times the Army would preceed an assault with highly diluted versions, mixed up so to just paralyze or cause breathing problems, rendering hero rebel fighters helpless.
The news would appear - a dozen affected, stricken.
One devilish agent works to kill only if the standard antidote atropine is administered, and some died that way.
In fact Assad DID JUST THAT only yesterday!! in East Hama province. As reported over 100 are dead. However the other weapons were very nasty too - cluster bombs, barrel bombs, heat-seeking rockets, and the usual.
[EMAIL=“https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=621654841253060&set=a.382885705129976.91927.363889943696219&type=1&relevant_count=1”]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=621654841253060&set=a.382885705129976.91927.363889943696219&type=1&relevant_count=1
The only person suggesting a confrontation would be Obama with his moronic red line statement. He tried to pawn it off on Congress and they said got back a hearty “oh hell no”.
Well that can’t be so, [del]the dear leader[/del] Obama made an agreement and the inspectors have identified all the chemicals.
Are you aware that at the time and in the context of a presidential campaign Obama’s Republican opponent was publically pushing the Syria Chemical Weapons issue against Obama’s weakness on that issue. He was also pushing the idea of sending in US ground troops as was shown in the following exchange on this thread last September:
On 09-16-2013 at 12:12 PM **RickJay wrote: **
And on 09-16-2013 at 12:38 PM here was my response: Why doesn’t Mitt Romney’s opinion matter?..
did he draw a red line in the sand? No, that would be Obama.
Romney wouldnt bother waiting for a
Red line to be crossed. He’s already committing ground troops to save the world from WMD. Where did we hear that before?
How come Obama’s masterful saber rattling wasn’t sufficient to stop Assad’s use of chlorine gas?
I can’t wait to hear this answer.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Our friend does not have a good record when it comes to acknowledging his errors.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not reading this whole thread but in case it didn’t come to your attention, subsequent to his piece last year on faulty US intelliegence in relation to the Sarin attack, Sy Hersh wrote last week that it was likely a Back Flag attack:
London Review of Books
It follows up on this piece from last year: