Why would NOT CIA use gas on the innocent Syrians to get involved (again)?
Syria has no oil. It also doesn’t have the strategic value of Iraq. Also what evidence is there that the US used WMD in Iraq or Syria? The US and UK considered painting a US plane in UN colors, letting the Iraqis shoot it down and using that to justify a war but they didn’t do it. Seeing how even that act of false flag behavior was too controversial, I don’t think they would use WMD. I’m sure a lot of bad shit happens that the government never tells us about, but them using WMD sounds pretty out there.
If anything, if the US gets involved it’ll likely be what we did in Libya. A mix of special forces, air support and providing funding/training/weapons to the rebels.
The problem is the Syrian rebels are allied with terrorist organizations. So it isn’t like it is the US’s allies vs US’s enemies. It is a group the US is wary of vs a group the US is wary of fighting each other.
This is the beauty of conspiracy theories - you can blame them on anyone you want to, regardless of the facts. The “bad guys” can deliberately bring down buildings, plant false evidence, gas a thousand of the wrong side, burn the Reichstag, whatever - and it’s the fault of whomever you want it to be the fault of; evidence to the contrary is simply planted and false.
I don’t think the CIA is involved at all. What does give me pause though is the question cui bono? Why would Assad use chemical weapons at this point? He’s winning the war, it makes no sense for him to risk such an attack. It makes a great deal of sense however for the rebels to do it and blame the government. At one stroke they could tip the balance in their favor by bringing the Western powers in.
Or maybe I’m just a cynical old bastard.
This doesn’t make any kind of sense.
Every day on the news you can see military officials and politicians from the US saying loudly what a clusterfuck Syria is and how we should back away very quickly. There is no advantage in getting involved. Assad deserves every bad thing that happens to him but the people who take over once he is gone will not be pro-US in any way, shape or form.
But in the midst of this, the CIA is gassing Syrians? Please convince me how this follows.
Moved to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Nor did Afghanistan.
Actually, it has quite a lot of strategic value bordering Lebanon, Israel, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq.
Nevertheless, those are minor nitpicks.
Had the OP any evidence that the CIA faked a bunch of chemical weapons attacks committed by Saddam the OP would have a point, but the OP doesn’t.
He’s simply JAQing off.
Afghanistan was harboring Al Qaeda. Syrian rebels are allied with Al Qaeda.
AFAIK he wasn’t winning until fairly recently, and even today he’s hardly poised to wrap this whole thing up tomorrow. Even assuming things continue to go his way he’s looking at months or maybe even years to quell this thing and get business back to normal. I think it makes perfect sense for him to have used chemical weapons if he and his generals felt it would be effective in eventual victory. After all, he did it before and from his perspective the international ramifications weren’t exactly horrific. He was denounced by several countries, and bad things were said about him. Maybe some countries upped providing arms to his enemies. No biggie from his perspective. Russia and China are still covering for him on the UNSC so nothing binding will be done against him, the US is still gun shy from the cluster fuck that is Iraq and Afghanistan, and while several European countries are unhappy it’s unlikely they are going to do anything substantial against him (not even sure they could really do much as it’s a bit beyond their envelop for easy intervention, unlike Libya). So, what’s the down side to him using the nasty stuff, at least based on his previous use?
As to the OP, what would be the reason the CIA would WANT to get the US involved in Syria? What would be the upside for them in trying something stupid like that? What’s the reward to their risk? If you are going to build a CT, at least make it a good CT. Sheesh.
Afghanistan was harbouring bin Laden. They were given the option of handing over a mass murder who had perpetrated an act of war upon the USA. They declined. Thus, they were allies in an act of war against the USA.
Of all the clusterfucks in the Middle East and Asia, Afghanistan was the most justified and most successful at the time. The CIA and special forces took over in a matter of months with a minimum of troops and deaths, and the happy cooperation of some of the locals. If it weren’t for the Taliban’s refuge in lawless tribal Pakistan, this would be a success. Considering the Russians tried for 10 years with much less success, I would suggest when the CIA is allowed to do things their way, without political interference, sometimes they do a damned good job.
As for Syria - the USA has been trying for years to stay out of the mess, it’s a no-win with no great prize. A civil-war Syria and a weakened resulting state would give Israel years of breathing room. A foe with a pile of foreign weaponry, not so.
Assad was winning a month or two ago when Hezbollah got into the act to protect their Iranian supply lines. Since then, the war has ground back down to a stalemate and the Hezbollah got a pointed message in their own stronghold when someone, likely from Syrian rebels, car-bombed their Beirut neighbourhood.
It’s a 4-way (at least) stupidity, with the Assad Alawite/Shiite bunch and Hezbollah opposed by the secular Free Syrian Army with minor support from the west, Sunni fanatics including al-Queda types financed by the Saudis, and the Kurds hoping to add quasi-independent Syrian Kurdistan to the Iraqi area. None of these groups trust the others, and add in the religious and ethnic tribal strife, and it’s a mess you don’t want to step in.
The CIA does not need to stir the pot. These groups are already causing massive waves in a small pot. There’s nothing to gain. The west should and probably will arm the Free Syrian Army, the moderate secular group, but did not need to kill anyone… and the reason they don’t arm them is the fear that any arms they hand over - anti-tank, anti-aircraft, etc. - will end up pointed at the Israeli border or against US troops and embassies elsewhere. So a “covert action” to persuade the west to arm them is extremely counterproductive.
Obama may instead opt to do drone strikes, cruise missiles, and intelligence to help the secular faction, but likely will avoid giving them significant arms.
The only suspicious oddity is why??? Is Assad that stupid, or are his military a bunch of loose cannons, or is this a calculated risk - that the west will do nothing and it will intimidate the rebels?
You’re talking about the son of Hafez Assad and the nephew of Rifaat Assad(the man who murdered a city and raged when the western media low-balled the estimate as to how many he killed at Hama).
He’s a gangster from a long line of gangsters.
I see in the news another possibility. They thought they could confuse things by blaming it on the rebels, and nobody could pin anything definite on them. And it seems that earlier attacks have had zero consequences…
This gas business is weird as hell. Assad is doing well enough and now gaining …
Chemical weapons are very good at suppressing dissidents because if you shell a neighborhood or area where both fighters and their supporters are you kill them all indiscriminately and in a way that puts a lot of terror into them. It also makes the area not so pleasant to be around for some time afterward.
They have proven to be much less effective if you’re using them on an “active” battlefield where you have assets, because once detonate the wind can scatter the gas in all directions, but Hussein proved after the Persian Gulf War that chemical weapons are extremely effective at suppressing insurgencies. Assad was losing, now he’s at a point where he’s basically entrenched and is in no real danger of losing, but that isn’t the same as winning. He probably thinks if he can use chemical weapons with a free hand it’ll be the final push the regime needs to tilt the full thing into his favor.
I think now that Assad has clawed back from the precipice to a stable foothold, he’s going to want to actually take control of all of Syria again–his ultimate goal is not to hold parts of the country for the rest of his life but to rule all of Syria again as he did before this all started.
The regime is now offering to let UN inspectors visit the site some five days later, but realistically that isn’t necessary. The protocol the United States, France, and the United Kingdom have adopted will give all the hard verification any reasonable person will need. After the previous attacks when the three powers initially disagreed about whether chemical weapons have been used they adopted a procedure by which each of the three has their own independent sources and will collect samples from those sources who were dispatched on the ground right after it happened. These samples will then go through each of the three country’s systems and be validated as proof of chemical weapons attacks or not, and then the three countries will compare samples. That’s basically a type of triple verification, and if they have good controls in place to make sure they’re getting samples from trustworthy sources it seems a lot more reliable to me than UN inspection five days after the attack when the site has been further damaged by conventional weapons and possibly manipulated by the regime.
So I think we’ll have pretty reliable verification of chemical weapons use, but the reality is that still doesn’t mean we need to get involved in Syria.
The issue isn’t that gas was used. It’s getting to the bottom of who the hell used it. It’s not like any western power really wants to know, they just need access in order to announce ‘yep, definitely Assad’ - regardless.
But it is a good place for a natural-gas pipeline.
Like I laid out, there is compelling evidence it was Assad’s regime already, the French and British as part of the tri-national verification process set up after the last attack have already said it was the regime. The United States is still waiting for final word from its intelligence agencies, but most likely they will confirm it was Assad’s regime.
There is little to no evidence the rebels have any access to sarin gas, while we know Assad has significant amounts of sarin gas as a matter of fact. The rebels are not in a good position, if they had gas they would be using it en masse most likely–especially since international support is basically as minimal as it can get for them in any case.
Further, President Obama desperately wants to avoid any involvement in Syria. He’s ignored the calls of international allies, as well as a large bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators who want him to do something about Assad. It makes no sense at all for Obama to engineer a reason to do something he could have done and received substantial political and international support for months ago.
This really isn’t at all like W. Bush and his predilection for involvement in Iraq. In this scenario President Obama could have gotten us involved in Syria many months ago, and most likely both the UK and France (so 3/5ths of the UN Security Council permanent members) as well as many other European allies would have been in lock step with Obama on the issue. On this issue it’s fair to say that outside of Russia which has realpolitik reasons to support Assad (and China to a lesser degree), Obama has been the most reticent of great power leaders to get involved in Syria.
FWIW I think Obama is receiving a lot of criticism (and some of it fair–he never should have drawn a “line” on this matter because it forces your hand later or makes you look weak, neither of which is good) for this but I pretty much agree with the policy of non-intervention. Assad is a terrible dictator but most likely extremely violent Islamic fundamentalists allied with the worst Islamic terror groups would replace Assad if he fell. We either get a monster in power…or a monster in power. Given that choice I see no reason to expend American blood and treasure determining which monster is in power.
Some folks would assume this to be satire.
There is surveillance evidence showing it was a sustained shelling by the regime. The only real question is what was shelled. The three countries mentioned have intelligence assets that were assigned to surreptitiously collect samples from any alleged attacks, and those samples would then be processed by the three countries.
You can either argue it is impossible to know who did anything ever, or we can trust that process. There is no other viable process for dealing with attacks in a warzone–certainly not a process involving the UN some five days later after the area has been essentially carpet bombed by the regime and during which the site could have been massively doctored.
If the rebels even have gas, why aren’t they using it to strike regime targets? Using it as a ploy to get the West involved doesn’t actually make sense–because this would be the third instance in which various Western powers have confirmed chemicals weapons were used by the regime in Syria and most likely it won’t even result in anything.
No, what would actually make sense is for the rebels to drop these sarin devices on high value regime targets–not to waste them in a foolish attempt to frame Assad. If they were discovered they’d lose any chance of Western support, but even if it worked history has already shown Western support is unlikely at best. The only reasonable expectation is that if the rebels had access to sarin gas they’d have used it on Assad’s forces, most likely hitting a high value target. It’d be interesting to know where they would have gotten sarin, though. We don’t believe they have any access to the regime’s chemical weapons depots nor do I believe any international actor would have given them sarin.
The ones allied with al-Qaeda and such, where would they have gotten sarin? If al-Qaeda had sarin they’d probably want to use it somewhere more visible than a Syrian warzone.