Why does Assad use chemical weapons?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m no fan of Assad nor his decision-making.

But I hardly think this particular move was the game-changer that guarantees he doesn’t get a cushy retirement *a la *the Shah. Assad has been doomed for a few years now.

Which means, just like any other cornered psychopathic rat, he will fight to the death of himself, and more importantly, the death every other human being he can touch in any way. This chapter in Syrian history ends when he is dead or the Syrian government has exhausted its ability to kill anyone.

The next chapter will likely be no less bloody, but even more confusing to Westerners. Pacifying Syria post-Assad will make the CPA’s efforts to pacify Iraq look like a massive success.

22

What is going to happen if he does get killed or deposed? We all saw what happened when we did that to Iraq and Libya.
Ousting Assad without a very clear plan of what to do next will be the greatest gift we could possibly give ISIS.

23

Gas leaves infrastructure mostly intact.

24

Why did Assad use chemical weapons ?

Because he knew he could and threats of retaliation by the US were just hot air.
However, Barack HUSSEIN Obama is no longer making those worthless threats and the new president Trump backs up those threats.

I doubt we will see chemical weapons used by Assad in the future.

President Trump should send a picture of Saddam Hussein being captured in a cave and then hanging by a rope after being executed by his own people.

25

We know his middle name. What’s that supposed to prove?

You seem to have forgotten that Congress then didn’t approve of the strike. The same Congress that now approves of it.
Two face much?

26

Oh, how quickly we forget.

27

It is good to know that Trump is being very careful here. First he gives the other side ample warning to get out of the way, then the missiles are careful to miss the WMD storage bunkers-wouldn’t want to damage anything important, and then he is careful to say he won’t do it again. North Korea must be feeling much better right now.

Perhaps that picture would look good next to Bin Laden’s picture…

28

Chemical weapons are a very poor choice against a foe in close contact, or occupying an area you wish to occupy soon.

But against a well-protected or dug in foe in an area you don’t wish to occupy, or wish to simply deny to the enemy, they work well enough. Plus, and this s a BIG point: They are terrifying and they burn your enemy’s resources. They require an extraordiary logistical effort to respond to, treat, and clean up. People have a huge, and IMO, quite reasonable fear of them - you may be bunkered-up quite nicely, reasonably safe from explosive munitions, but even a near-miss by a chemical warhead that you didn’t even hear can kill you and everyone around you in a most horrific and terrible way.

People say “women and kids are dying every day, what makes chemical weapons so different?” Well, those folks have never watched a person gasping to breath for hours, drowning in their own bodily fluids,* surrounded by medical professionals whom can’t do a damned thing to help. Any conventional casualty whom lived that long under medical care actually stands a good chance to live.

*Not in person, but I’ve forced my self to watch vids, and even isloated and insolated by distance and the medium, it’s horrible.

29

Well, clearly Obama should have pursued military action by executive order rather than going to Congress…so they could then accuse him of abusing executive authority.

Nerve agents like sarin also pose a hazard to first responders, and even to hospital personnel due to the persistence of agents and the tiny amount necessary to cause severe injury or death, such that medical personnel may not even be able to transport or treat survivors. Chemical nerve agents are referred to as “the poor man’s nuke” for very good reasons.

Stranger

30

Not everyone would agree with that he should have done it by executive order. In fact, some people demanded he get congressional approval for any attacks.

31

The new shorthand for the old saw about being “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t” is now just referred to as “Obama’d”. Dude could have personally discovered a cure for leukemia, delivered a perfect roundhouse kick to Putin’s face, won the Tour de France, and shot a round of golf in 18, and Mitch McConnell would still be calling to block his legislative agenda and refused to give his nominee for the Supreme Court a hearing.

Stranger

32

Indeed. How quickly Trump forgets.

33

Are we to believe that Assad, who is winning the war, has squirreled away some chemical weapons in violation of the agreement to eliminate them and then decide completely without any reason to use them to hand the US, Turkey and the West in general a casus belli? A gift to those who want to attack the Syrian government? Could he be that stupid? Of course not.

He didn’t do it. The Al-Qaeda/al Nustra terrorists staged this, like they staged others back in 2013, or thereabouts.

34

**Why does Assad use chemical weapons? **

Because he’s a Dick-Hole.

35

So are retaliatory missile strikes enough to “stabilize” the situation? The USA needs, for as little cost to itself as possible, to discourage the use of chemical weapons, so other nations will not be tempted to use them. Also, so that Assad decides to just buy more barrel bombs instead.

I would assume that is what it is. That you need 10 HE bombs to kill the same number of people as 1 equivalent in size/total cost sarin bomb, more or less. (maybe the ratio is other than 10:1, but it’s some ratio in favor of using chemical weapons in a world that didn’t ban them)

So if each time Assad uses chemical weapons, a volley of missiles break some expensive jets of his, it doesn’t pay to use them. It’s the equivalent of a fine for speeding. Could this be enough to stabilize the situation so we can all sleep at night?

36

Yes, he did and the idea that al Qaeda did something is clearly refuted by the evidences.

The track record of the Assed regime is precisely these miscalculations of pushing the brutality one step too far. It is indeed how the civil war became a civil war and not just protests.

37

I too am struggling to understand why Assad would do something this stupid.

Everything had turned around for him. Russia made all the difference. Rebel and ISIS controlled cities were coming back under Syria’s control. Syria’s forces were regaining ground everywhere.

Trump had signaled that Assad’s removal wasn’t a priority.

All Assad had to was be patient. The chemical attack did nothing but wreck everything for him.

Now, even Trump admits that Assad has to go.

They need to investigate more and make certain ISIS or the rebels didn’t set off that chemical attack. It would be such a clever way to discredit Assad’s government.

38

Yes your president clumsily gave the regime Assad the false confidence it could push harder.

Investigate?

Why do you not read the actual news reporting and look at some maps before repeating extremely stupid conspiracy thinking.

So you think DAESH which has no presence and is hundreds of kilometers away separated by the territory controlled by the Regime Assad some how got the highly unstable, dangerous, complex Sarin to the enclave controlled by their sworn enemies, an Nusra? Oh that makes great sense… No in fact it is an idiotic proposition.

So you think An Nusra is the logical explanation because… it makes sense that the dangerous, unstable Sarin would be able to be quickly transported to the exact spot where the Regime Assad warplanes struck, and set off the gas Sarin in the exact timing of airstrikes and in the EXACT place? God must be guiding them to have this specific knowledge so magically.

What magical expertise an Nusra has to know where and when precisely a warplane will strike!!!

Of course even the Regime Assad is not claiming anything but that their warplane " accidentally " struck a reserve that an Nusra had in place, by coincidence… An illogical claim as your own Pentagon has shown the strike crater to be in the middle of a road, not in a building storage.

Or one can say that the Regime Assad with the known ability to produce the Sarin precurosors (it is an instable acidic chemical that can not long be stored in its killer form) and with the known ability to deliver it via the warplanes, and with the known predeliction to use the air bombing terror weapons - like the chlorine gas, like the barrel bombs, like other chemical attacks got over-encouraged by the stupid, loose, uncareful statements of your government and your President and decided to test if they could push harder.

Since the Syrian civil war started from exactly this terror oriented behavior of pushing to far by the Regime Assad, in the ordering of terrorist attacks against the peaceful civilian demonstrators that led a good portion of his own military to revolt, it is not in any way surprising to see the Regime make this kind of error.

Or you can come up with ignorant and illogical conspiracy stories to excuse the incompetence of your goverment discourse in the past months.

39

I said that I’m struggling to make sense of this.

Even a despot should recognize when he is winning and understand when it’s not appropriate to use banned terror weapons. He needed to avoid upsetting the International community.

Apparently Assad is just crazy. Nothing else about this chemical attack makes any sense.

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40

My concern is how they can get rid of Assad and still keep a stable government.

There are almost 2 million people in Damascus and it could be the next Aleppo. The central government’s military is the only thing keeping that city safe.

The tragedy in Syria is already bad enough without destroying the last major city.