Trump Bombs Syria

symyjym said:

No I didn't.

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Mental Lental said:

Actually I'll be honest I have no idea how powerful a cruise missile is. My feeling was that they produce a pretty big bang. If they have more precise smaller payloads I'm happy to be educated.

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sir albion said:

It's a catch 22.....Chemical weapons are a no no although theoretically what's the difference between chemicals or bombs as they both kill loads.Personally I wish we westerners would just pull out and leave the Middle East to it as it's impossible to get peace in those parts due to so many religious factions.
Strange how nobody goes to North Korea mmmmm

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Brighton Lines said:

Air strikes- Good.

Monumental foreign policy change in 48 hours- Disturbing

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Mental Lental said:

59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to take out 1 base seems a bit extreme. Gonna be some collateral damage for sure.

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heathgate said:

They will soon...... this year I reckon, Trump will destroy his ballistic missile capability, especially if he can get no positive actiuon from the Chinese.

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symyjym said:

If Syria did use chemical weapons it was a proportional response

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I'm not convinced that Assad used chemical weapons because it serves no advantage, but if he did, he won't do it again, and if another chemical event hapens we can be certain that it was the Syrian opposition.

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heathgate said:

What's odd about reacting to a specific threat is incident?....

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

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Brighton Lines said:

His actions are showing him unhinged and reactionary. He long said the U.S should stay out of it- and he has long known about the use of chemical weapons. Suddenly pictures emerge of a single strike , albeit appalling, and he's flattening airbases and declaring proxy war with Russia.

As I said, I believe that destroying Syria's air capacity will have a positive outworking for citizens. However, such swift political policy shifts are worrying.

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Triggaaar said:

That's an unusual viewpoint. How is the mass murder of civilian men, women and children, using chemical weapons, proportional?

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Triggaaar said:

No we can't. You have a such a blinkered view it's unbelievable.

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Brighton Lines said:

His actions are showing him unhinged and reactionary. He long said the U.S should stay out of it- and he has long known about the use of chemical weapons. Suddenly pictures emerge of a single strike , albeit appalling, and he's flattening airbases and declaring proxy war with Russia.

As I said, I believe that destroying Syria's air capacity will have a positive outworking for citizens. However, such swift political policy shifts are worrying.

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sir albion said:

It's a catch 22.....Chemical weapons are a no no although theoretically what's the difference between chemicals or bombs as they both kill loads.Personally I wish we westerners would just pull out and leave the Middle East to it as it's impossible to get peace in those parts due to so many religious factions.
Strange how nobody goes to North Korea mmmmm

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scamander said:

The opinion I have (that it's US/Russia working in each other's interests) seems to be gaining ground elsewhere, not that it validates it any more or less. Russia were complicit and facilitated the attack in both allowing the airspace and agreeing to move their assets out of the base. It's worht asking why they were so helpful. Simple answer is that it pushes Assad back to Putin and also gives a counter to the Trump rumours about him being too close with Russia by setting up a phoney confrontation with Putin.

Win win for both Putin and Trump. I'd go so far to say it's all been set up by Russia to allow the US to demonstrate force for the reasons above.

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Two Professors said:

Would you rather he'd stayed asleep like the previous incumbent,Rip van Obama?

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With the latest hasty judgment about Tuesday’s poison-gas deaths in a rebel-held area of northern Syria, the mainstream U.S. news media once more reveals itself to be a threat to responsible journalism and to the future of humanity. Again, we see the troubling pattern of verdict first, investigation later, even when that behavior can lead to a dangerous war escalation and many more deaths.

Before a careful evaluation of the evidence about Tuesday’s tragedy was possible, The New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets had pinned the blame for the scores of dead on the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. That revived demands that the U.S. and other nations establish a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which would amount to launching another “regime change” war and would put America into a likely hot war with nuclear-armed Russia.

Even as basic facts were still being assembled about Tuesday’s incident, we, the public, were prepped to disbelieve the Syrian government’s response that the poison gas may have come from rebel stockpiles that could have been released either accidentally or intentionally causing the civilian deaths in a town in Idlib Province.

One possible scenario was that Syrian warplanes bombed a rebel weapons depot where the poison gas was stored, causing the containers to rupture. Another possibility was a staged event by increasingly desperate Al Qaeda jihadists who are known for their disregard for innocent human life.

While it’s hard to know at this early stage what’s true and what’s not, these alternative explanations, I’m told, are being seriously examined by U.S. intelligence. One source cited the possibility that Turkey had supplied the rebels with the poison gas (the exact type still not determined) for potential use against Kurdish forces operating in northern Syria near the Turkish border or for a terror attack in a government-controlled city like the capital of Damascus.

Reporting by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and statements by some Turkish police and opposition politicians linked Turkish intelligence and Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists to the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus that killed hundreds, although the Times and other major U.S. news outlets continue to blame that incident on Assad’s regime.

Seasoned Propagandists

On Tuesday, the Times assigned two of its most committed anti-Syrian-government propagandists to cover the Syrian poison-gas story, Michael B. Gordon and Anne Barnard.

Gordon has been at the front lines of the neocon “regime change” strategies for years. He co-authored the Times’ infamous aluminum tube story of Sept. 8, 2002, which relied on U.S. government sources and Iraqi defectors to frighten Americans with images of “mushroom clouds” if they didn’t support President George W. Bush’s upcoming invasion of Iraq. The timing played perfectly into the administration’s advertising “rollout” for the Iraq War.

Of course, the story turned out to be false and to have unfairly downplayed skeptics of the claim that the aluminum tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, when the aluminum tubes actually were meant for artillery. But the article provided a great impetus toward the Iraq War, which ended up killing nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Gordon’s co-author, Judith Miller, became the only U.S. journalist known to have lost a job over the reckless and shoddy reporting that contributed to the Iraq disaster.
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Gordon perhaps personifies better than anyone how mainstream journalism works. If you publish false stories that fit with the Establishment’s narratives, your job is safe even if the stories blow up in your face. However, if you go against the grain – and if someone important raises a question about your story – you can easily find yourself out on the street even if your story is correct.
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Perhaps for the first time, The New York Times cited President Trump as a reliable source because he and his press secretary were saying what the Times wanted to hear – that Assad must be guilty.
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Gordon and Barnard also could be wrong about Assad being the only one with a motive to deploy poison gas. Since Assad’s forces have gained a decisive upper-hand over the rebels, why would he risk stirring up international outrage at this juncture? On the other hand, the desperate rebels might view the horrific scenes from the chemical-weapons deployment as a last-minute game-changer.

Pressure to Prejudge

None of this means that Assad’s forces are innocent, but a serious investigation ascertains the facts and then reaches a conclusion, not the other way around.
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The Times, however, apparently has no concern anymore for letting the facts be assembled and then letting them speak for themselves. The Times weighed in on Wednesday with an editorial entitled “A New Level of Depravity From Mr. Assad.”

Another problem with the behavior of the Times and the mainstream media is that by jumping to a conclusion they pressure other important people to join in the condemnations and that, in turn, can prejudice the investigation while also generating a dangerous momentum toward war.
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U.N. investigators, who were under intense pressure from the United States and Western nations to give them something to use against Assad, did support rebel claims about the government using chlorine in a couple of cases, but the investigators also received testimony from residents in one area who described the staging of a chlorine attack for propaganda purposes.

One might have thought that the evidence of one staged attack would have increased skepticism about the other incidents, but the U.N. investigators apparently understood what was good for their careers, so they endorsed a couple of other alleged cases despite their inability to conduct a field investigation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “UN Team Heard Claims of Staged Chemical Attacks.”]

Now, that dubious U.N. report is being leveraged into this new incident, one opportunistic finding used to justify another. But the pressing question now is: Have the American people come to understand enough about “psychological operations” and “strategic communications” that they will finally show the skepticism that no longer exists in the major U.S. news media?
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symyjym said:

Yes you are right, I should correct myself; they took the appropriate action level based on how certain they were.

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Yes we can. If he did use chemical weapons he wouldn't use them again after last night.

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rippleman said:

We, as a country, can't be taking the moral high ground on -anything- all the time we keep doing business with the Saudis.

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rippleman said:

And oil is the reason why our PM has been off kowtowing to the Saudis who are a really nasty bunch of ********s when she has other things she should be doing. We, as a country, can't be taking the moral high ground on -anything- all the time we keep doing business with the Saudis.

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Brighton Lines said:

The merits of the strike are not the issue here. What is of concern is the reactionary instincts of Trump. What is emerging is foreign policy on the hoof, government by headlines, and- even worse- his given mood and influences.

The man is dangerous.

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