Syrian War

[Mikebert]

In the aftermath of the airstrike in Syria I read this from a poster at American Conservative who questions whether Assad was responsible for the recent chemical weapons use since last time we accused of doing this (in 2013) it turns out we were wrong. When questioned on this he responded with

I suggest you take a close look at Robert Parry’s discussion of the matter. As he points out, the NY Times recently dropped the alleged 2013 Syrian use of chemical weapons from its list of atrocities. Why? Because the factual basis for the allegation fell apart. Yet the allegation is still being made, including by people in the media who ought to know better.
See Parry’s article at https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/06/nyt-retreats-on-2013-syria-sarin-claims/ .
And then take a look at Ray McGovern’s piece at https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/11/the-syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/ .
Look also at the articles linked in both pieces, especially https://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/29/nyt-backs-off-its-syria-sarin-analysis/, discussing how the NY Times backed away from its earlier claims concerning the 2013 chemical attack, and especially at
Seymour Hersh’s article at https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line and the report both Seymour and, eventually but sotto voce, the NY Times cited:
https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.pdf.

What do people think? Particularly Jordan and Warren.

[Mikebert]

The reason I am curious is a chemical attack of this sort by the Syrian government makes no sense to me.  It appears to offer no benefit to Assad while making Putin look bad and turning a neutral Trump administration into a belligerent. On the other hand it seems to make sense for regime opponents.

Given the possibility that we jumped the gun last time (which might be why Obama never carried out any airstrikes after Russia granted him a face-saving way to back down) I am not so quick to just accept our government's word that Assad was definitely responsible.

It seems to me there is a way to test this.  If it really was a regime opponent who had the chemical munitions, we should see more of this.

[Eric the Green]

(04-11-2017, 06:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: The reason I am curious is a chemical attack of this sort by the Syrian government makes no sense to me.  It appears to offer no benefit to Assad while making Putin look bad and turning a neutral Trump administration into a belligerent. On the other hand it seems to make sense for regime opponents.

Given the possibility that we jumped the gun last time (which might be why Obama never carried out any airstrikes after Russia granted him a face-saving way to back down) I am not so quick to just accept our government's word that Assad was definitely responsible.

It seems to me there is a way to test this.  If it really was a regime opponent who had the chemical munitions, we should see more of this.

Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

[Bob Butler 54]

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 06:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: The reason I am curious is a chemical attack of this sort by the Syrian government makes no sense to me.  It appears to offer no benefit to Assad while making Putin look bad and turning a neutral Trump administration into a belligerent. On the other hand it seems to make sense for regime opponents.

Given the possibility that we jumped the gun last time (which might be why Obama never carried out any airstrikes after Russia granted him a face-saving way to back down) I am not so quick to just accept our government's word that Assad was definitely responsible.

It seems to me there is a way to test this.  If it really was a regime opponent who had the chemical munitions, we should see more of this.

Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

It might make more sense from an Agricultural Age perspective.  In the old days, the elite class has a quite functional monopoly on the use of force and a set of ethics that allows use of terror to maintain peace by intimidation.  Think of Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan and the rest of Cynic Hero's Great Heroes of authoritarian thinking and governance.  The path to greatness is through obedience of the people.  The path to obedience is through terror.

An Industrial Age people, steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, would not be apt to tolerate the sort of oppression used regularly by monarchies, dictatorships, fascists, communists, etc...  Much of the Middle East is just learning how to rebel against terror.  Syria is a crucible as various cultures are attempting to learn.  They seemed to be figuring out rejecting tyrants.  The tricky subtle part is learning to tolerate and coexist with those who are different.  It is also easier to learn to fight a tyrant than it is to learn to rule without being a tyrant.

Remember Kinser's point that humans form tribes and the conscience of an individual does not apply well to those outside of the tribe? It is OK to barrel bomb, gas and otherwise kill and terrorize civilians so long as they are not in one's own tribe.  Such a narrow tribal conscience, where it is OK to commit blatantly evil acts upon those outside one's tribe, is repugnant to many with Enlightenment touched morals.  A lack of morality regarding those outside the tribe is common to those lacking Enlightenment morals.

It might also be a question of expanding one's tribe, of not thinking one is part of a narrow group.  If one thinks one is a Kurd, or a Shiite, or a member of a Turkish tribe, or whatever of the many groups striving in the region, it can be easy to do awful things to those who are not part of one's own tribe.  The direction to move in is trying to live well and coexist with any who will let one's self live and coexist as well.  That is obvious, necessary, naive, and really really hard to do when it is not part of one's culture. Think of trying to convince Cynic that one's tribe shouldn't overrun all other tribes, or convincing Kinser that the poor ought to have health insurance, and those two are products of American culture. The Middle East has been no where near as exposed to the Enlightenment.

The Middle East is just one part of the world in the middle of a transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age governance and values.  They are under a handicap as they have seen the ugly side of both Western and Marxist values, and are not inclined to adapt either of these oft tread paths out the Agricultural Age.  Thus, they are clinging to Islam, which is not a path out of the Agricultural Age. Islam is an anchor binding cultures to the Agricultural Age.

Anyway, a gas attack is a way of saying it is more prudent to accept tyranny than to resist.  I  expect Assad to be familiar with and embrace that style of thinking and governing.  I half expect the rest of the Middle East to fall back on this approach as well.  Putin too.  Russia is further along the path than many countries, but the path to Enlightenment values is often two steps forward, one back. Putin seems to be one of the steps back. I'm not religious, but I don't often bash religion either. I generally don't stand up and say the problem is religious, the problem is radical Islam. However, Islam does embrace tribal thinking. A believer is supposedly a brother, and the unbeliever is abominable.

Anyway, gas might not make sense in a world where Enlightenment values dominate.  Making sense of the Middle East definitely requires stepping outside of one's own values and trying to understand (though not agree with) other older value systems. As with other strange beasts like Republicans (or Democrats), they seem insane, evil, stupid, naive or otherwise incapable of acceptable human thought. No. They just grew out of a different culture, era, mind set. You aren't going to understand without doing a good deal of growing one's self.

[Mikebert]

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

Is killing people with conventional explosives OK with you?

[Eric the Green]

(04-12-2017, 07:02 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

Is killing people with conventional explosives OK with you?

That's what Assad as done to 450,000 of his people; NO, not OK.

[Eric the Green]

(04-12-2017, 12:16 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 06:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: The reason I am curious is a chemical attack of this sort by the Syrian government makes no sense to me.  It appears to offer no benefit to Assad while making Putin look bad and turning a neutral Trump administration into a belligerent. On the other hand it seems to make sense for regime opponents.

Given the possibility that we jumped the gun last time (which might be why Obama never carried out any airstrikes after Russia granted him a face-saving way to back down) I am not so quick to just accept our government's word that Assad was definitely responsible.

It seems to me there is a way to test this.  If it really was a regime opponent who had the chemical munitions, we should see more of this.

Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

It might make more sense from an Agricultural Age perspective.  In the old days, the elite class has a quite functional monopoly on the use of force and a set of ethics that allows use of terror to maintain peace by intimidation.  Think of Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan and the rest of Cynic Hero's Great Heroes of authoritarian thinking and governance.  The path to greatness is through obedience of the people.  The path to obedience is through terror.

An Industrial Age people, steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, would not be apt to tolerate the sort of oppression used regularly by monarchies, dictatorships, fascists, communists, etc...  Much of the Middle East is just learning how to rebel against terror.  Syria is a crucible as various cultures are attempting to learn.  They seemed to be figuring out rejecting tyrants.  The tricky subtle part is learning to tolerate and coexist with those who are different.  It is also easier to learn to fight a tyrant than it is to learn to rule without being a tyrant.

Remember Kinser's point that humans form tribes and the conscience of an individual does not apply well to those outside of the tribe?  It is OK to barrel bomb, gas and otherwise kill and terrorize civilians so long as they are not in one's own tribe.  Such a narrow tribal conscience, where it is OK to commit blatantly evil acts upon those outside one's tribe, is repugnant to many with Enlightenment touched morals.  A lack of morality regarding those outside the tribe is common to those lacking Enlightenment morals.

It might also be a question of expanding one's tribe, of not thinking one is part of a narrow group.  If one thinks one is a Kurd, or a Shiite, or a member of a Turkish tribe, or whatever of the many groups striving in the region, it can be easy to do awful things to those who are not part of one's own tribe.  The direction to move in is trying to live well and coexist with any who will let one's self live and coexist as well.  That is obvious, necessary, naive, and really really hard to do when it is not part of one's culture.  Think of trying to convince Cynic that one's tribe shouldn't overrun all other tribes, or convincing Kinser that the poor ought to have health insurance, and those two are products of American culture.  The Middle East has been no where near as exposed to the Enlightenment.

The Middle East is just one part of the world in the middle of a transition from Agricultural Age to Industrial Age governance and values.  They are under a handicap as they have seen the ugly side of both Western and Marxist values, and are not inclined to adapt either of these oft tread paths out the Agricultural Age.  Thus, they are clinging to Islam, which is not a path out of the Agricultural Age.  Islam is an anchor binding cultures to the Agricultural Age.

Anyway, a gas attack is a way of saying it is more prudent to accept tyranny than to resist.  I  expect Assad to be familiar with and embrace that style of thinking and governing.  I half expect the rest of the Middle East to fall back on this approach as well.  Putin too.  Russia is further along the path than many countries, but the path to Enlightenment values is often two steps forward, one back.  Putin seems to be one of the steps back.  I'm not religious, but I don't often bash religion either.   I generally don't stand up and say the problem is religious, the problem is radical Islam.  However, Islam does embrace tribal thinking.  A believer is supposedly a brother, and the unbeliever is abominable.

Anyway, gas might not make sense in a world where Enlightenment values dominate.  Making sense of the Middle East definitely requires stepping outside of one's own values and trying to understand (though not agree with) other older value systems.  As with other strange beasts like Republicans (or Democrats), they seem insane, evil, stupid, naive or otherwise incapable of acceptable human thought.  No.  They just grew out of a different culture, era, mind set.  You aren't going to understand without doing a good deal of growing one's self.

Yes; the Mars-values meme era mindset. Quite prominent in the Middle East. I don't think all rulers in the area are as locked into the Bronze Age/early Iron Age Mars era as Assad is, but it's not uncommon. Saddam was another practitioner. With the IS, we have a mixture of the worst sides of Mars and Jupiter.
http://philosopherswheel.com/planetarydynamics.html

This video explains the succeeding values memes in human evolution,




and remember that at the end, Rahu is equivalent to Uranus, and Ketu to Neptune, in their meanings.

[Ragnarök_62]

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: <snip>
Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

1. Well now,  promoting "regime change" is not a "national interest" thing.  So what? There's shit going on world wide, say in South Sudan.

2. Trump fucked up. Dropping assorted ordinance is not in the "national interest", nor is this "world policeman gig" that somehow crossed Der Drumphendodo's mind.

3. I do agree that "nothing he has done, makes sense".


Death to MIC, death to NeoCONS, death to hand wringing "humanitarian" concerns.

[Mikebert]

(04-12-2017, 01:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-12-2017, 07:02 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

Is killing people with conventional explosives OK with you?

That's what Assad as done to 450,000 of his people; NO, not OK.

What about Americans killing people with conventional explosives?  Is that OK with you?

[Mikebert]

But this is besides the point.  Did anyone read the linked material?  It looks like Assad was not responsible for the 2013 gas attack.  Note that the NYT did not list this attack as one of the atrocities of the Syrian regime.  If the American government was wrong about the 2013 gas attack, and wrong about the Iraqi WMDs, how certain are you that Assad really is behind this attack?

[Eric the Green]

(04-12-2017, 06:58 PM)Mikebert Wrote: But this is besides the point.  Did anyone read the linked material?  It looks like Assad was not responsible for the 2013 gas attack.  Note that the NYT did not list this attack as one of the atrocities of the Syrian regime.  If the American government was wrong about the 2013 gas attack, and wrong about the Iraqi WMDs, how certain are you that Assad really is behind this attack?

Not certain. I do believe Assad is behind these attacks, but I could be wrong. About the latest one, they said they had satellite coverage of it. That the attacks occurred, is certain; unlike Iraq's possession of WMD which was never proven.

It seems implausible to me that the rebels could acquire these weapons, or that they could or would stage these attacks in order to discredit Assad.

[Eric the Green]

(04-12-2017, 06:54 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-12-2017, 01:09 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(04-12-2017, 07:02 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-11-2017, 10:23 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes. I suspect however that where Assad is concerned, "making sense" is not something on his mind. Only cruelty and oppression has ever made sense to him. Nothing he has done makes any sense.

Is killing people with conventional explosives OK with you?

That's what Assad as done to 450,000 of his people; NO, not OK.

What about Americans killing people with conventional explosives?  Is that OK with you?

NO, I am not in favor of drone attacks that kill innocent civilians, and I don't favor air attacks generally. But I am not too concerned about an air attack on an airbase from which gas and other attacks by Assad came. I understand there are questions about it, and in fact there should be about any action taken by Trump.

I would be in favor of an international invasion to overthrow Assad, at this point, if it does not trigger a war with Russia. That would have to be negotiated. Of course negotiations would be preferred, if there's hope of Russian cooperation. It is not happening, because the US and other rebel supporters do not have enough military involvement or credible threat. You can't negotiate with a criminal regime like Russia from a weak position. Sometimes military action is necessary against monstrous tyrants who endanger the world, as in the case of Assad and the Islamic State. Civilians are always in danger in any military operation.

[Mikebert]

(04-13-2017, 10:40 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Not certain. I do believe Assad is behind these attacks, but I could be wrong. About the latest one, they said they had satellite coverage of it.

They said that in 2013 too. I don't know what to believe anymore.

[Eric the Green]

If Syria did not have chemical weapons, and didn't use them, why was Russia able to force Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons, which they supposedly did and which everyone saw him move out of Syria? Did these links in your post prove that rebels had chemical weapons, and used them on their own people?

One thing the Parry story seemed to say was that the evidence for the chemical attack was not revealed, so it was investigated (poorly) by the NY Times. A lot of evidence seems to be withheld about this month's attack as well, and of course the Iraq evidence for WMD was phony. The government feels the need to keep secret what it knows, and I don't understand why. But I did not see that they had satellite evidence in the 2013 case, which they at least claimed they had in this current case.

The Parry report compared the deception over WMD in Iraq that was used to get us into war in 2003, with the faulty analysis of rocket paths in 2013 that almost got us into war in Syria. But this would not have gotten us into war with Syria; what Obama was considering and asked congress for in 2013 was just a missile strike like Trump has just carried out, and like Clinton did on Iraq.

[Mikebert]

(04-14-2017, 10:31 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: If Syria did not have chemical weapons, and didn't use them, why was Russia able to force Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons, which they supposedly did and which everyone saw him move out of Syria? Did these links in your post prove that rebels had chemical weapons, and used them on their own people?

One thing the Parry story seemed to say was that the evidence for the chemical attack was not revealed, so it was investigated (poorly) by the NY Times. A lot of evidence seems to be withheld about this month's attack as well, and of course the Iraq evidence for WMD was phony. The government feels the need to keep secret what it knows, and I don't understand why. But I did not see that they had satellite evidence in the 2013 case, which they at least claimed they had in this current case.

The Parry report compared the deception over WMD in Iraq that was used to get us into war in 2003, with the faulty analysis of rocket paths in 2013 that almost got us into war in Syria. But this would not have gotten us into war with Syria; what Obama was considering and asked congress for in 2013 was just a missile strike like Trump has just carried out, and like Clinton did on Iraq.

So you didn't look at them then.

[Eric the Green]

(04-14-2017, 11:18 AM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-14-2017, 10:31 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: If Syria did not have chemical weapons, and didn't use them, why was Russia able to force Assad to get rid of his chemical weapons, which they supposedly did and which everyone saw him move out of Syria? Did these links in your post prove that rebels had chemical weapons, and used them on their own people?

One thing the Parry story seemed to say was that the evidence for the chemical attack was not revealed, so it was investigated (poorly) by the NY Times. A lot of evidence seems to be withheld about this month's attack as well, and of course the Iraq evidence for WMD was phony. The government feels the need to keep secret what it knows, and I don't understand why. But I did not see that they had satellite evidence in the 2013 case, which they at least claimed they had in this current case.

The Parry report compared the deception over WMD in Iraq that was used to get us into war in 2003, with the faulty analysis of rocket paths in 2013 that almost got us into war in Syria. But this would not have gotten us into war with Syria; what Obama was considering and asked congress for in 2013 was just a missile strike like Trump has just carried out, and like Clinton did on Iraq.

So you didn't look at them then.

I hadn't read the Hersh article. His claims are interesting, but disputed in a reply below the article.

Wa-Post article on Obama's and Trump's strike plans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh...e881cfca5e

[Mikebert]

(04-14-2017, 11:47 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I hadn't read the Hersh article. His claims are interesting, but disputed in a reply below the article.

For me the key is the MIT report that said the chemical munition-carrying rockets only had a range of 2 km, which meant it could not possibly have hit the known targets from regime-held territory, that is, the story told by American intelligence could not possibly be true.
 
That American intelligence has published patent nonsense as "evidence" justifying American aggression was demonstrated to me during the Iraqi war incident when we were shown a bombed-out trailer that the administration claimed was a portable bioweapons lab used for making anthrax.  The trailer was small and contained only one large tank, and a small amount of ancillary equipment that was all smashed up. 
 
I’m a chemical engineer who had worked in fermentation and fermentation recovery operations for 15 years at that time. I knew what major pieces of equipment you would need to make weaponized anthrax: a fermentor, a decanting centrifuge and a spray drier. There should be two large tanks-like things in the trailer, the fermentor and the spray-drying chamber, as well as the centrifuge (another large piece of equipment) plus a lot of ancillary equipment for inoculum prep, fuel storage, the heating element for the spray dryer, (if they used steam like we do, then they would need a boiler and another large pressure vessel, which the trailer clearly did not have) and so on. The trailer was small, there was not nearly enough busted-up stuff in it to be the equipment required to make anthrax. The idea that that trailer was supposedly used for this purpose was laughable.
 
The Iraqis said it was a portable hydrogen-generating unit for filling balloons.  Such a unit would contain one large pressure vessel and a small tank, and a bit of piping between them. The smashed up trailer contained just the equipment you would need for that purpose.  It was plain as a pikestaff to me that what Americans were saying was BS whereas what Iraqis were saying was consistent with what was in the trailer.

I assume this missile story was just as fishy to physicists and engineers familiar with aerodynamics as that trailer story was to me.  Once the MIT guys established that the administration was lying about the missiles, the mere possibility that the al Nusra front could have gotten some sarin from the Turks which the Hersh article relates makes it even less likely that the regime was behind the attacks.  I am not saying there is solid proof that al Nusra was involved.  I am saying that is no reason to believe that the regime was more likely involved than someone else.

For me the crowning point was this NYT article:

New York Times Wrote:In the latest attack on civilians, more than 100 people, including children, were believed to have been killed by chemical weapons in a rebel-held town in Idlib Province on Tuesday. A doctor there said the victims' pupils were reduced to pinhole-size dots, a characteristic of nerve agents and other banned toxic substances.
 
The United States put the blame for the attack on the Syrian government and its patrons, Russia and Iran, and suggested that the salvo was a war crime. While the attack was among the deadliest uses of chemical weapons in Syria in years, it was far from an isolated case.
 
During the war, the Assad government has been accused of regularly using chlorine gas, which is less deadly than the agent used on Tuesday and is legal in its commercial form. According to the Violations Documentation Center, an antigovernment watchdog, more than 1,100 Syrians have been killed in chemical weapons and gas attacks.

Now the 1100 dead is just the sum of the 1000 killed in the 2013 sarin attack and the 100 killed in the 2017 incident. But the article makes no mention of the 2013 attack.  This is because several months after the 2013 attack, the NYT times backed off their initial reporting of regime involvement in that attack.

[Eric the Green]

I think we have to differentiate our ideas of what deception may have occurred, depending on who is president and from which party (s)he comes. The Iraq deception was part of Bush's Project for a New American Century, a deliberate scheme to exert power in the Middle East including by invading countries. I too could tell that the Iraq WMD "proof" was phony. Obama had no such project. We can't just assume that because deception occurred in 2003, that it also occurred in 2013. Obama was simply not as interested in starting mid-east wars as Bush and his cabal were. Kerry had ran against Bush on the issue of the WMD deception, and as Sec. of State was aware of the need not to repeat the mistake in 2013.

I'm not sure about the evidence regarding the 2013 proposed attack, which Obama backed off from. The statements by Hersh are controversial, and the rockets might have come from a closer location anyway. And the USA did not use the NY Times story as the basis for their threatened attack anyway. They had secret evidence, apparently.

I checked out the MIT article. Grounds for further thought.

The question seems to be whether the rockets used had a long enough range to have been fired into opposition-controlled areas from regime controlled areas. The maps also show some neutral territory closer to opposition-held neighborhoods which the Syrian military could have occupied. The wikipedia article suggested that the regime had occupied some closer areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack

Skeptics argue that the al-Nusra radical Muslim terrorist groups could have made the weapons, and could have fired the rockets on the territory they controlled. We know that Al Qaeda in Iraq (now the Islamic State) killed people in order to help foment the civil war in Iraq, so it's plausible that their terrorist allies in Syria could have killed rebel civilians in order to arouse an American attack on Assad, whom al-Nusra was fighting as allies of the Free Syrian Army.

The pro-US and UN intelligence seemed to conclude that the sarin was of the same type the Assad regime had used before. Satellites picked up missile firings from regime-controlled areas into rebel-held areas at the time of the attacks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat...story.html

Reports say the rockets used to attack the eastern suburbs were a 330 mm motor type, not the 140 mm type analyzed by MIT. The Soviet-era 140mm rockets were used to attack closer targets to the South. But I saw no info yet about the range of the 330mm rockets.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/human-rights...l-weapons/

Human Rights Watch said in 2013 that the 140mm rockets had a 9.8 km range.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_investi...#Responses

I admit that the various reports I have seen are not conclusive, as far as I can tell, about who fired the weapons in 2013. This article covers the various accounts, and includes both the longer-range attribution of 9.6 km to the Soviet 140mm rocket (which the Soviets had earlier supplied to Syria), and the accounts that the regime controlled territory closer to the attacks than stated in the skeptical accounts.
http://middleeast-armscontrol.com/2014/0...nclusions/

Now we have a new group in charge in the USA. Trump was not keen on starting a US war against Syria. But he did like to show that he was tough where Obama had been weak.

[Cynic Hero '86]

We should not be intervening in Syria. Assad is doing civilization a service by eliminating Islamists and would be future Islamists.

[Eric the Green]

Assad is attacking the Arab Spring opposition to his tyrannical rule, not Islamists.