The Syrian "Revolution": A Farce from Beginning to End

Discussion in 'World Events' started by ExposingAmericanLies, Jun 18, 2013.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Internet ‘dialogue’ can sometimes get lost in translation. Since we can’t ‘hear’ one another, the propensity to take things ‘the wrong way,’ or perceive an innocuous comment as an insult, is not uncommon. We’ve all experienced it. But, I digress…

    Back on topic…

    @ Geoff, to your point above…so, would you say you are leaning towards accepting that Assad’s regime was behind the chemical attacks? I too struggled with the idea of the US striking Syria without conclusive evidence, but think it is safe to ‘assume’ at this stage, that the rebels weren’t responsible.
     
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  3. milkweed Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/syria-chemical-weapons-not-assad-bild

    So is it military taking matters into their own hands or is it undercover rebel factions looking to topple Assad?

    Are the powers that be defying Assad because of fear of losing or a power grab?
     
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  5. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    power grab, obviously. Just look at Libya and Egypt.
     
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  7. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Kerry has now given Assad an ultimatum.

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says that if President Bashar al-Assad wants to avert an attack on Syria in response to his government's alleged use of chemical weapons he should hand over his entire arsenal by the end of the week.
    http://www.voanews.com/content/kerry-tells-syria-to-turn-over-chemical-weapons/1745991.html

    Russian officials are saying much the same thing
    MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian foreign minister says Moscow will push Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control.
    Sergey Lavrov said Monday that if such a move would help avert a possible U.S. strike on Syria, Russia will start work “immediately” to persuade Syria to relinquish control over its chemical arsenals.
    Lavrov told reporters that Russia would urge Syria to concentrate its chemical weapons in certain areas under international oversight and then dismantle them.
    Source: (Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ace-saving-lifeline-push-syria/#ixzz2ePZFTQyW
    Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter)

    Perhaps Obama and Putin had that little chat after all.
     
  8. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    This seems like a no-brainer for Assad. If he truly did not order the CW attack on his people and has lost control of portions of his military apparatus then turning them over to the Russians is more than a wise decision it is imperative.
     
  9. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    Syrian TV is now reporting positive response to suggestion.
    BBC News
     
  10. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Ahh, Diplomats earning their pay! Good to hear.
     
  11. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    It's a no-brainer for Kerry, the guy lost the backing of many government officials necessary and now uses the "escape" card to save the presidency face. Assad never ordered the CW attack on his people, the Syrian government has agreed to this international diplomacy.
     
  12. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    More than save face.
    If this works out, Obama is going to look very astute.
    History judges on results.
     
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    If Assad agrees to this, would that be tantamount to admitting guilt that he was responsible for the chemical attacks?
     
  14. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Not really, it could also be he has lost control of some of his generals and is just being prudent.
     
  15. youreyes amorphous ocean Valued Senior Member

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    Assad has already agreed to this, because its a win-win situation for Syria. The government never ordered the chemical attacks, these were carried out by the rebels. Using any further chemical attacks as a proposition for war with Syrian government will be denied if such chemical weapons will be in U.N. hands.

    The real question is WHY DID USA DECIDE TO LAY LOW ON ITS OBLITERATING MILITARY CAMPAIGN AGAINST SYRIA?
    1) Syria defenses are not your Libya or Egypt or Afghanistan.
    2) Not enough support in US government and international arena.
     
  16. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Allowing the time for diplomacy to work, he would have thunk it. I think Americans have had enough of the Yosemite Sam mentality.
     
  17. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, good to know. Then I don't see why he wouldn't agree to these terms, right?
     
  18. quinnsong Valued Senior Member

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    Exactimundo!
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    In post 814, GeoffP admits to first calling you a "twit" and apologizes, saying that was inappropriate. In post 819 you say: To Geoff, "I apologise for insinuating that you supported a mass killer ..." which I think is quite generous as anyone responsible for 100,000 dead, many being innocent civilians, has earned the label of "mass killer" IF not done as part of war, like the intentional and needless fire-storm English bombers made in Dresden. (Needless as the war was won. Dresden had no military significance. It was destroyed in a single raid to impress Stalin. Dresden was chosen as it was untouched as too far east for bombers to make round trip until some airfields had been captured in western Germany.

    The mass killing Dresden fire storm was intentional: For several months before the raid a dozen or so math, probability and other experts had been locked in an Army barrack computing what was the optimum mix of HE bombs (to block roads so fire truck could do little and to put fuel into the streets; What fraction of the incendiary bombs should have hooks to catch on the roof gutters, preventing citizens from putting them out, etc. This is all well documented in Book Fire and the Air War* which focused entirely on the un-insulated barrack, with 24/7 guard at the door, where the raid was carefully planned.

    My point is that War makes men and governments, even the best, into monsters with zero humanity; But to repay you for reading this far, I'll tell a very small part of the book's story:

    Coal was rationed, and only a small bucket full per day was provided to those calculating with pencils, so they went on strike for more coal, saying they could not hold the pencils their fingers were so cold. It took a couple of weeks, and several threats that they could be tried for treason, before the "won't calculate without more coal" problem worked it way up thru the chain of command all the way to Churchill, who promptly said: "Give them their God Dam coal." So work resumed to make the first well planned fire storm in history.

    Their work was "Perfect" - In only half a day there was no oxygen left in the ground level air in central Dresden - so all died - That could even be called massive chemical warfare; but the heat continued for days. When a week or 10 days later the more shallow bomb shelters (often just a basement) could be entered, many had an inch or so of grease on the floor. The heat had rendered the fat out of the dead bodies, still sitting on benches.

    So, yes, back to the topic: Both the Syrian government and those trying to topple it are behaving as men usually do when fighting for their lives in a war, but England had no military need to kill the population of Dresden. That they carefully planned to is not well known as the victor get to write the history of wars.

    * I read the original edition, more than 50 years ago - Amazon says it is no longer available but they still have four copies of this 2005 one:
    Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor (Jan 18, 2005) and many copies of a relatively recent one with the original's same title.
    As I said: The victors get to write history and remove now embarrassing books. The original is rich in details about what happened inside the un-insulated barrack so I suspect the author was one of those who did the calculating - perhaps a feeling of guilt drove him to write the book.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 9, 2013
  20. p-brane Registered Senior Member

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    This is just a ploy. The protocols for doing this don't exist and it seems unlikely any could be agreed on.
     
  21. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Same as previous, until further notice.

    Ironically I almost agree with the current WH stance, that 'common sense' would suggest it was the Syrians. I'm somewhere between 75:25 and 90:10. It's just that a staged attack has happened before with religious extremists of this strain, and in point of fact it wouldn't be that hard to do. Sure, it's much less likely than Assad or one of his henchmen ordering, absolutely. But you note that even the WH is stepping around carefully now; they actually recognize the possibility of this more unlikely culpability (which is historic), or they just recognise that their political opponents could glom onto this and leverage it for political gains (which is situation: normal).

    I appreciate fully what you're saying. It's just that after the last fiasco - and we have some of those - I'd like to be nearly 100% sure that it's so. Milkweed, below, mentions the possibility the rebs doing it; another one is the military going ahead on their own. I think that's unlikely since Assad's brother-in-law is the guy in charge of the rockets (I forget where I read that). Then again, if you won't betray family, who will you betray, politically? The case certainly has its merits.

    I'll link again to those sites I found; informative and diagnostic, if undecided. There seems to be a new contention that the actual delivery system was 140mm or 122mm Grad-type rockets, which could carry much higher payloads of sarin and which would have ample range to hit all the target sites right from al-Mazzah AB or Dummar AB. This is the Israelis' thinking now: that the 155th Syrian Artillery Regiment launched the attacks. That would eliminate a lot of the speculation, although I still think one has to wait for the UN report and pray that they tested both unexpended 107mm rounds on-site (which apparently have a high fail rate) and 140mm Grad rockets on-site. One of the problems with the earlier reporting (assuming this latter reporting is true) is that they only mentioned the 107s, which actually don't have the range to hit all the attack sites, apparently. The 107s are truck-mounted, and instead of firing they could have driven to the border of the government-controlled zone and fired from there, but even then they still wouldn't have enough range to hit the furthest targets, and there are no reports that I'm aware of of rocket firing other than at the bases (al-Mazzah and Dummar). It could be so, though.

    Sorry if that's long-winded. The reason behind my wanting to wait for the UN investigation (which I pessimistically think will be fucked up and non-categorical) is that we have to convince not merely the Syrian people (who I'm sure are primarily for the rebels), but also the Arab populations around Syria, and even to reach into the minds of the supporters of the non-secular rebel opposition (al-Nusra and the other group). The reason I say this latter is that whatever happens - good cruise strikes, bad cruise strikes - those same groups and the conservative Islamic movement loosely allied to their moral principles of hating the US and Western stuff will simply start blaming the Americans for fill in the blank. Do you see what I mean? No matter what happens, there will still be lots and lots of conservative hatepreaching, even if the Americans help them and the secular elements of the FSA. What I'd like to do in the UN/US response to the Damascus attack is blunt the Islamist capacity for perversity in their political process by taking a very measured and deliberate approach to the response to the Syrians, because that will be another factor in the development of the popularity of reactionary theocratic thought over the whole Middle East, to say nothing of the lives that are going to be lost in such a response. Maybe even elements of the reactionary Alawite body in Syria supporting Assad could be reached on the other side. Who knows?
     
  22. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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  23. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Awww. Someone already got to this article. P-brane raises a good point: what protocols exist for this? Then again, Iraq did fly a lot of its air force to Iran during the first war, didn't they? And then again, it would be novel to transport a huge CW arsenal. They could pull a Yes, Minister: announce that such a move is in the undertaking and then bury good and deep with the civil service.
     

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