CNN: Syria chemical attack victims gassed as they slept

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[Bang]

Aside from any of the other Trump-Putin hoodwinking, in a very real sense Trump has to count on Putin's "blessing' for lack of a better word. Diplomacy has to be exercised very carefully and very concisely here.

Risking war with russia is crazy in that it would touch off a global war, and China would likely not sit idly by, and would not come in on our side., and I think the Russians know they have backed us into this corner in Syria.
 

I think if Trump can swing ANY deal with Russia, it is to get them to turn around so we can send in some surgical strikes to take out some serious Syrian high ups, possibly even Assad. Maybe ally with russia to try to keep all the other little factions in that hornet's nest in line. (Although, Mr Dealmaker can't let Russia run him roughshod on that.)

And if he can do THAT, well, that would damn well be presidential.

 

~Bang

 

[visionary]

It may have been intended to be watered down some though.  

 

Then again the usual history for this sort of thing is USA, UK, France proposes and Russia either tries to water it down to make it toothless or proposes an alternate version that does that and failing that vetoes it.  They usually veto anything that includes enforcement or condemnation of the regime.

 

 

 

 

 

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[AsburySkinsFan]

I repeat, my son will not fight in Syria or any other sandbox.

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Hmmm

 

 

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Well, this is a fish or cut bait moment.  If you want to look the other way, you can but you will see more of it and it well eventually become worse and worse.  If you do something about it, it's likely a long War.  Russia will not fight us straight up.  They know that even in our current state of defensive capabilities, we would put a hurting on them.  However, there are other things we can do.  We can use tomahawk missiles to take out air fields that are being used to carry out these raids.  That is temporary but we can do that with very little risk.  We can turn our counter intelligence cyber assets loose on Russia and reck their economic systems, if we choose to.  We can make it very hard for Russia to do business in the world.  We can reverse the horrible deal struck with Iran, by the Obama Administration and basically send their economy back into the ice age.  We can use covert strikes on Iran to wreck their developmental efforts.  There are things we can do but we can also look the other way.  The one positive is that if you decide to act, you can easily turn around and send a message to China and Korea as well.

 

Fish or Cut Bait moment for the Nation and this should be bye partisan.  This should not be a deal where the left pulls this out 4 years down the road and claims they were lied to or didn't ever want this.  Has to be a decision made by all Americans.

[Riggo-toni]

Ultimately, what the Russians want most is to maintain their access to Syrian ports. I'm not saying loyalty to the Assad family, which goes back all the way to Syria's secession from Egypt, is inconsequential, but if we guaranteed to recognize and protect their rights to those areas in conjunction with a conviction to attack the Assad regime, we could possibly force a compromise in which Assad is relegated to a rump state in the traditional Alawite Latakiah province, while Damascus, Aleppo, and the Kurdish areas all get independent or autonomous states.  It's a settlement we should have pushed for back when the regime look vulnerable, but we stayed out hoping the regime would collapse, not appreciating that the Russians not allow that.

[AsburySkinsFan]

tweet:

"Many find it hard to imagine a single mass casualty event truly changed Trump's stance on Syria when these things happen almost daily."

 

My point exactly.

[FanboyOf91]

If Turkey is on our side, the Russian presence in Syria is toast.

[ABQCOWBOY]

2 minutes ago, Riggo-toni said:

Ultimately, what the Russians want most is to maintain their access to Syrian ports. I'm not saying loyalty to the Assad family, which goes back all the way to Syria's secession from Egypt, is inconsequential, but if we guaranteed to recognize and protect their rights to those areas in conjunction with a conviction to attack the Assad regime, we could possibly force a compromise in which Assad is relegated to a rump state in the traditional Alawite Latakiah province, while Damascus, Aleppo, and the Kurdish areas all get independent or autonomous states.  It's a settlement we should have pushed for back when the regime look vulnerable, but we stayed out hoping the regime would collapse, not appreciating that the Russians not allow that.

 

The problem there is that Iran likely won't go along with that.  Their primary supporter is Iran.  Russia is aiding them as well but Iran is paying for it all.  Iran will not go for this but then again, they need to be taken down a peg or two as well so that's probably another domino you need to consider as well.

[Riggo-toni]

I don't give a **** what Iran wants.

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[ABQCOWBOY]

1 minute ago, Riggo-toni said:

I don't give a **** what Iran wants.

 

Neither do I but none the less, it needs to be factored in.  Fighting a war, which this could easily turn into, against Syria is different then fighting a War against all the countries in the middle east who are sympathetic to Syria and Iran and hate the U.S., plus Russia.   After all, this is technically Russian sovereignty and our Military capabilities are not what they used to be.   This will pin down a significant amount of Military assets for awhile, if we go to War.

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This is interesting, but I'm not sure how reliable this is.  I think she works for RT.  Which is interesting also.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ABQCOWBOY]

Not sure which poster asked but somebody asked if these chemical weapons were Syrian or not.  I don't know if we have an answer to that but I will say this, Susan Rice stated on NPR on January 16th that all chemical weapons were removed from Syria.  If it proves that these were Syrian, that's going to be another brick in the wall of Susan Rice.

[Bang]

i know it isn't popular given the general "everything about the iraq war was wrong" attitude that prevails, but many defecting Iraqi military officials, specifically one of their highest generals of the air force, stated that they moved their chemical stockpiles to Syria. Given all of the runaround prior to the war of throwing inspectors out before they could look in a building , then bringing them back to show it to them in three days.. spotless..  it happened way way too often to not lend any credence that a known bad guy with known chemical weapons that we knew used them, moved them to the other bad guy's house next door for safekeeping.

 

I think there are no shortages of these weapons in the region.

 

~Bang

 

[FanboyOf91]

I thought the Russians were responsible for declaring the chemical weapons gone.

 

(Spoiler: they lied)

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[FanboyOf91]

 

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O...k....

 

 

 

[FanboyOf91]

 

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