CNN: Syria chemical attack victims gassed as they slept

[AsburySkinsFan]

2 hours ago, FanboyOf91 said:

Obama officials endorsed the strike

Apparently there are an awful lot of people in DC who favor any action over the right actions. There is no long term plan, so far this is a one off deal. Yet, the DC dopes are coming out of the woodwork saying we should have done this ineffective largely symbolic strike a long time ago.

Substance people....substance!

[visionary]

 

[Destino]

3 hours ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

As a pacifist I find all of this stupid. A largely ceremonial missle strike that did nothing to stop further gas attacks. 

If using banned weapons results in nothing but angry words by politicians doing it again is an easy choice.  If using them results in the worlds most powerful military hitting your own, and knowing that a repeat will likely increase in severity, the decision to use them again becomes more complicated.  

 

 

[visionary]

 

[twa]

2 hours ago, visionary said:

 

 

20% of the 7th Wing of Syria’s Air Force, whole lotta planes left

[visionary]

 

[AsburySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, Destino said:

If using banned weapons results in nothing but angry words by politicians doing it again is an easy choice.  If using them results in the worlds most powerful military hitting your own, and knowing that a repeat will likely increase in severity, the decision to use them again becomes more complicated.  

 

 

Oh I get the concept, but if that's the logic you're going with then last night's strike was a slap on the wrist. THIS is how that logic looks.

 

[FrFan]

In the meantime what does the EC do about it ?, as usually besides sending humanitarian aid, nothing. Many EC leaders want a strong resolution from the UN, ridiculous since Russia has the right to veto. They just keep on blaming Bashar, worrying, and regreting the current situation. Ban Ki-Moon declared in 2015 only USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey can do something.

Inept EC leaders keep on prescribing painkillers instead of performing surgery.

[techboy]

12 hours ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

Like the report said earlier, that's why people get outraged with chemical attacks, you get to see the suffering whereas the bombing images aren't allowed on tv.

 

I've been thinking about this claim, and it just doesn't hold water. Sure, that might have some effect now, but the Geneva Protocols banning chemical weapons were first passed in 1925, and that is well before television became a factor, People were horrified by the effects of poison gas in World War I, much more so than bombs or bullets.

 

In reality, I think the increased horror is far more likely to be for two reasons:

 

1. People feel more defenseless. You can take cover from a bomb or a bullet, but gas seeps in everywhere. It's just scarier.

 

2. It's more indiscriminate. If a bomb is targeted properly, the explosion doesn't drift over to the nearby village and wipe out a bunch of unintended targets. The aggressor has at least some control over where a bomb goes, even if there are misses. Gas is completely out of control from the second it's deployed, and there's no easy containment.

[Bang]

I think both are true. Gas earned it's ban in Word war I for exactly the reasons Techboy states.. that and it was the first true weapon of mass destruction,, that destroyed nothing but people, and in horrible fashion. And, it can blow back on those who fired it. (SO much of how we fight wars changed with WWI, and why it was called the "war to end all wars', because there had never been the death and destruction on such a scale before. Prior to that they fought small wars ith small forces with all their pomp and circumstance, and in comparison, not many people died in much of the action. Weapons were inaccurate, strategies and tactics favored close in battles with glory and valor to be won with swords and bayonets...  gas didn't give you an opponent to fight and killed practically everyone in the trench.

A bomb goes off, and people die, but it's over in an instant, and frankly, there may be nothing left of the people it hits. Death by gas takes a while, is painful and horrific to see happening. Plus, if a bomb goes off and you are still there after it explodes, it's over. Gas..  you won't know if you've been killed or not until it starts it's effects, which you may be watching happen all around you..  terrifying. It's a slow creeping death that you may not be able to escape, or even see.

Plus, the effects of nerve gasses on the human body are horrible. How you die is unbelievably bad. and depending on what agents are used, could cause all sorts of manifestations,, blister agents being particularly nasty.

 

And i think it's also true what ASF states is the images of dead kids is allowed to be shown, as opposed to blown apart bodies. It has a larger psychological effect on the population because they see firsthand the horrors of thewar. hearing 30 kids died in an airstrike that levels a building is one thing,, seeing those 30 kids looking like they're asleep and realizing they are not...  it's going to have a bigger impact on the viewer. Parents crying on a pile of rubble are not going to have the same effect as images of a parent holding dead children in their arms..  Trump himself said the images of those kids moved him. 

 

but, really, when you get right down to it war is legalized wholesale murder..  what does it really matter how it's done? Always seemed to me to be one of the biggest absurdities to me, trying to place rules on war.

 

~Bang

[RedskinsFan44]

I agree with some of the points above but the notion that conventional weapons don't lead to long, lingering, horrific deaths is a fallacy.

[Springfield]

Last night, I watched "White Helmets" again for the second time.  It's an award winning Netflix documentary and only runs 40 minutes.

 

I strongly urge anyone who has an interest in the Syrian conflict to watch it.  I consider it to be a "must watch" in my opinion.  It's quick, it's well made and it's effective.  Gives you a glimpse into the existence of a Syrian, while we are over here squabbling about what is and isn't effective.

 

Please, watch it if you haven't yet.

[Bang]

12 minutes ago, RedskinsFan44 said:

I agree with some of the points above but the notion that conventional weapons don't lead to long, lingering, horrific deaths is a fallacy.

It's not what i said..  obviously if you get gut shot it's going to be along lingering death. Obviously having a limb blown off and bleeding out is long and slow and painful. This is understood, and the differences between conventionals and gas should not be taken as if one is "better" than the other.

But it might not be a slow death. A bullet can kill instantly, a bomb can kill instantly. To the soldier terrified in the trench; how he's going to die is a permanent thought. Will it be tghis, or that? A bomb, a bullet, gas? And all of them hope it's quick. And gas is not quick.

Gas is a long and slow and choking and painful death every time, period, and In World war I there isn't anything that can be done once it starts. There is no wound to try to close, there is no way to save yourself once you've been exposed to a lethal dose.

 

Most "rules of engagement" are designed to provide as equal a footing as possible for combatants, and to try to lessen the barbarity. Gas broke all those tenets.
Now, if gas weapons were developed now instead of then.. would it be considered as terrifying? Hard to say, but when they banned it, there was nothing worse.

 

~Bang

[AsburySkinsFan]

20 minutes ago, techboy said:

 

I've been thinking about this claim, and it just doesn't hold water. Sure, that might have some effect now, but the Geneva Protocols banning chemical weapons were first passed in 1925, and that is well before television became a factor, People were horrified by the effects of poison gas in World War I, much more so than bombs or bullets.

 

In reality, I think the increased horror is far more likely to be for two reasons:

 

1. People feel more defenseless. You can take cover from a bomb or a bullet, but gas seeps in everywhere. It's just scarier.

 

2. It's more indiscriminate. If a bomb is targeted properly, the explosion doesn't drift over to the nearby village and wipe out a bunch of unintended targets. The aggressor has at least some control over where a bomb goes, even if there are misses. Gas is completely out of control from the second it's deployed, and there's no easy containment.

You make bombs seems so very sterile. I just don't buy it, all of the sudden everyone cares about the Syrian children...what's the difference? What changed? Videos of children played on the evening news. My newsfeed blew up after those videos. Yet, not after the Russians and Syrians bombed Aleppo to dust. There all we had were images of daddy's carrying their children from the rubble...alive maybe dead but not writhing in pain or blown apart. Now all of the sudden people who last year were clamoring for an end to Syrian refugees began hollering for the US to strike Syria. Again I ask, what changed? Far fewer people were killed in this sarin attack than in many of the other attacks from Assad against his people. What changed? 

The cameras were there. 

[twa]

One thing that changed was we went to great effort and expense and secured Russian promises to remove chem weapons there.

 triple betrayal on top of the carnage.

[mistertim]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/warplanes-return-to-syrian-town-devastated-by-chemical-attack/2017/04/08/38a5d8cc-1bdc-11e7-8598-9a99da559f9e_story.html?utm_term=.eb4a03953f68

 

Quote

BEIRUT — Residents of the Syrian town devastated by a chemical-weapons attack last week said that warplanes had returned to bomb them Saturday as Turkey described a retaliatory U.S. assault as “cosmetic” unless it removed President Bashar al-Assad from power.

At least 86 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun, which left hundreds choking, fitting or foaming at the mouth.

Eyewitnesses said Saturday that fresh airstrikes on the area — now a ghost town — had killed one woman and wounded several others. Photographs from the site showed a pair of green slippers, abandoned by a blood-spattered doorway.

 

 

 

And they're right back at it. This whole thing was a complete PR stunt basically. We told the Russians exactly what we were going to do and where, they told the Syrians who moved out all of their people and their planes as well (because OF COURSE the Russians are going to do that, which we knew). Russia now has a reason to pretend to be all in a huff and condemn something we did, Assad gets to yell and scream while behind closed doors he is probably like "lol whatevs". But the most important part is that Trump gets to pretend to be "tough", get a "win", do something "better" than Obama, and get praise...which is his very real addiction. And the media applauds without question.

 

Do you really think Trump is going to forget how everyone, including the media, swooned as soon as he bombed something?

[Going Commando]

Syria is a powderkeg that could end up in an international war and I do not trust Trump to navigate this situation well at all.

[AsburySkinsFan]

15 minutes ago, mistertim said:

Do you really think Trump is going to forget how everyone, including the media, swooned as soon as he bombed something?

There's my real fear, that Trump will see military success as "his thing".

[Bang]

I hope he wont ualify this as a 'success'..  rather toothless expensive strike.

Wonder why he vetoed the decap option? Is it because of how Russia may react without their Assad puppet?

 

Part of me, the overly optimistic part, says that this was a show, and the realization of how far it could escalate are staying our hand a bit.

 

Course, i do expect Assad and Putin to do it again now that they have seen what our response was. Provoking us is a top priority.

 

~Bang

[AsburySkinsFan]

Sure looks like he sees it as a success....

 

[LD0506]

40 minutes ago, Bang said:

Wonder why he vetoed the decap option? Is it because of how Russia may react without their Assad puppet?

 

Russia doesn't give one large **** about Assad, this is and has always been about their naval base at Tartus.

 

If someone could broker a deal that would allow the Russians to retain that base Assad would be gone before dinner.

[visionary]

While I agree with a lot of the points made about chemical weapons.  I think some may be underestimating the horror of watching your city, your neighborhood, your fiends and family being blown to pieces around you day by day, having to scrabble desperately though rubble to search for them, hoping they're still alive, and knowing you could be next, over and over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[88Comrade2000]

This was only about Trump.  Trump didn't want to look weak and do nothing; especially after Obama drew Red lines and did not strike, when Syria crossed them. He could give a rats ass about Syria babies.  Also, probably a diversionary tactic; to keep us away from other things.

 

I don't trust Trump at all, when it comes to military actions. He is liable to draw us into a conflict that starts WW3.  When you have a mentally unstable person as President; that's the last thing you want.

[@DCGoldPants]

Say that we continue to bomb them and Assad does step down. Then what? Who takes over? The US? Russia? If you drive him out and then leave, that place will stay a war zone between factions. 

 

 

[mistertim]

9 minutes ago, @SkinsGoldPants said:

Say that we continue to bomb them and Assad does step down. Then what? Who takes over? The US? Russia? If you drive him out and then leave, that place will stay a war zone between factions. 

 

 

 

There's no chance Trump has even given any attention to it. That is complicated and requires time, thought, and subtle understanding of the situation and potential consequences of any action taken. All of that is anathema to him. He doesn't give two ****s beyond it making him look good.

 

The only thing we can hope is that his advisors will be able to steer him away from his impulses and stupidity. Otherwise this guy could lead us into a global conflict that he has no idea how to get out of.