First sentence - weak. Of course they have a purpose. To kill as many people as quickly and with as little effort as possible. Purposefully bombing civilians -nbd, but as long as soon as civilians dies from shifting winds it is unacceptable. - gotcha.
exactly. criticize one, criticize the other. I know, I know...we are not talking about ground troops (yet), but in Iraq at least we were not helping Al Qaeda as a faction of anti-SH forces. So if we DON'T put troops on the ground and our barrage of missles helps topple the Assad regime, who will make sure Al Qaeda doesn't get their hands on sophisticated weapons and chemical weapons? The other rebel factions? Please... SSDP (same $hit different party)
Wrong. There are far better alternatives to chemical weapons if you want to kill as many people as quickly and with as little effort as possible. Those alternatives just aren't as horrifying and as gruesome as a chemical weapons strike, which means that the only reason to use chemical weapons is not because you want to kill people, but because you want to kill people painfully. That's the key difference.
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Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP (aka the Tea Party of Britain), love this guy <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IyNa1G1dAIo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Exactly. Especially the foreign aid is going to be the missiles from the sky to kill hundreds times more of their people. If any Syrian wants USA to bomb their land, he is a clear cut traitor.
Nothing puts fear into an enemy like continually announcing how limited your strike will be,or using the term " a shot across the bow " ohhhhhhhh scary
What is the physical evidence that the Rebels where the ones who used the chemical weapons? According to the latest reports the shells in question were launched from Assad controlled areas and were aimed at rebel areas. I agree there is a possibility the rebels did this and they certainly have reasons for doing so but I am not seeing the direct evidence that the rebels were behind this attack. My mind is not made up regarding whether we should do anything in Syria and would like to know more.
Well, apparently the US government's evidence they did use them is 100 youtube videos. http://news.yahoo.com/u-government-assessment-syrian-governments-chemical-weapons-august-132609221--politics.html
There's also a story that came out today that Saudia Arabia actually gave the rebels the chemical weapons without telling them what they were and that they were set off by accident. http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/
CNN lying its ass off to beat the war drums. http://intellihub.com/2013/08/29/cnn-correspondent-syria-exposed-actor-caught-multiple-lies/
I read the article and it cites that possibly 13 rebels were killed which doesn't account for the hundreds repeatedly killed. Again not saying that this isn't true and it is possible both the rebels and government have chemical weapons.
There are too many players in Syria to definitively pinpoint who caused these 1500 people to die. You've got Syria, Syrian rebels, Iran, US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia as the probably the major players in this. Anyone of these parties are capable of causing these events to fall into place. Everyone just needs to step back and look for diplomacy as the solution. Violence only breeds more violence, its quite simple as that. Who cares how these 1500 people died, they in the end perished like so many others are everyday. Unless someone has irrefutable evidence, everyone needs to get to the table to bring back stability in the Middle East. Having said all that, I think things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, sadly.
I think that it is a false flag attack. The Syrian regime can't possibly be this stupid to provoke a response like this in a war they are winning
Assad's army is no match for overwhelming US firepower. But the US sucks at stopping terrorists and militias after we topple their government.
Obama has already said this is going to be a highly limited strike so Assad's army doesn't have to defeat or even hold off the US military. They just need to hunker down and survive.
So basically, we're launching a dozen high tech missiles @ $20 million a piece, so that Obama can look good, and we can feel better ? Money well spent.
Here is, basically, the theoretical rationale for drawing the red line with Syria. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-about-syria-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/ 8. Come on, what’s the big deal with chemical weapons? Assad kills 100,000 people with bullets and bombs but we’re freaked out over 1,000 who maybe died from poisonous gas? That seems silly. You’re definitely not the only one who thinks the distinction is arbitrary and artificial. But there’s a good case to be made that this is a rare opportunity, at least in theory, for the United States to make the war a little bit less terrible — and to make future wars less terrible. The whole idea that there are rules of war is a pretty new one: the practice of war is thousands of years old, but the idea that we can regulate war to make it less terrible has been around for less than a century. The institutions that do this are weak and inconsistent; the rules are frail and not very well observed. But one of the world’s few quasi-successes is the “norm” (a fancy way of saying a rule we all agree to follow) against chemical weapons. This norm is frail enough that Syria could drastically weaken it if we ignore Assad’s use of them, but it’s also strong enough that it’s worth protecting. So it’s sort of a low-hanging fruit: firing a few cruise missiles doesn’t cost us much and can maybe help preserve this really hard-won and valuable norm against chemical weapons. You didn’t answer my question. That just tells me that we can maybe preserve the norm against chemical weapons, not why we should. Fair point. Here’s the deal: war is going to happen. It just is. But the reason that the world got together in 1925 for the Geneva Convention to ban chemical weapons is because this stuff is really, really good at killing civilians but not actually very good at the conventional aim of warfare, which is to defeat the other side. You might say that they’re maybe 30 percent a battlefield weapon and 70 percent a tool of terror. In a world without that norm against chemical weapons, a military might fire off some sarin gas because it wants that battlefield advantage, even if it ends up causing unintended and massive suffering among civilians, maybe including its own. And if a military believes its adversary is probably going to use chemical weapons, it has a strong incentive to use them itself. After all, they’re fighting to the death. So both sides of any conflict, not to mention civilians everywhere, are better off if neither of them uses chemical weapons. But that requires believing that your opponent will never use them, no matter what. And the only way to do that, short of removing them from the planet entirely, is for everyone to just agree in advance to never use them and to really mean it. That becomes much harder if the norm is weakened because someone like Assad got away with it. It becomes a bit easier if everyone believes using chemical weapons will cost you a few inbound U.S. cruise missiles. That’s why the Obama administration apparently wants to fire cruise missiles at Syria, even though it won’t end the suffering, end the war or even really hurt Assad that much.
