General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCNN reporting Syria has filled missiles with chemical weapons (gas) and
authorities are waiting for Assad's orders to launch them. NBC is reporting and CNN picked up on it. Anderson is saying that if the chemicals have been mixed then it is a danger they could fall into radical islam hands if Assad's regime falls.
Syria loads chemical weapons into bombs; military awaits Assad's order at NBC News
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/05/15706380-syria-loads-chemical-weapons-into-bombs-military-awaits-assads-order
"SNIP................................................
The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.
The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.
As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.
Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.
.................................................SNIP"
Sarin Gas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,869 posts)They're just as much of a danger in the hands they're in now.
if they exist....
femmocrat
(28,394 posts)And the sane people are in charge now.
charlie and algernon
(13,447 posts)The US will surely enter the fighting, so we should be thankful that Obama would be smart enough and RESTRAINED enough ONLY to respond conventionally. Bush would be awfully tempted to respond in kind, with WMD's. Then the world would end by December 21st.
Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)Real bad. I don't think Obama will be able ot restrain himself.
applegrove
(118,696 posts)Iggy
(1,418 posts)Chemical installations can't be bombed.
So exactly what is our military going to do if these missiles are launched? ground invasion?
doubtful.
Renew Deal
(81,866 posts)The question is how do Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey respond. Turkey is itching for a fight.
OK, I'm on board with that-- let Turkey clean up this mess.
What about The House of Saud? oh yeah, they have US to clean up their messes (Iraq, Iran) for them... that's what servants do.
Arcanetrance
(2,670 posts)But genocide can not be tolerated and the use of chemical weapons is genocide. I'm not usually a fan of intervention but I hope the world comes together and let assad know there will be pure hell to pay for use of chemical weapons.
Comrade_McKenzie
(2,526 posts)Generic Brad
(14,275 posts)You get no arguments from me.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)to the country. If we can zero in on the govt's weapons??.... It is a holy mess there and many, many have died. But, what do you do?
Arcanetrance
(2,670 posts)Sadly there is no perfect solution war has none violence as a whole is the imperfect solution but sometimes that's what it takes to stop violence
applegrove
(118,696 posts)Dokkie
(1,688 posts)A nation should be able to defend itself against foreign invasion and this my friend is an invasion. Foreign fighters, Al Qaeda terrorists, funded by foreign govt and based in a foreign country. I say light em up if they are too stupid to keep advancing.
Just clarify. The people in the video below is who am talking about. Gentlemen, I present to you the Free Syrian Army
Enjoy
rDigital
(2,239 posts)JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)We ignored Sudan. We ignore the conflict minerals in DR Congo horror. We can't ignore this. IF they use them - the world must respond. I don't even think Iran would sit idly by and just observe ...
Whovian
(2,866 posts)Even loading the gas is threat enough for a call to some sort of action.
Left Coast2020
(2,397 posts)At least sean hasen't-any was crying about this. So are CNN and Cluster Faux tied at the hips?
LuvLoogie
(7,014 posts)then you can bet that the CIA is positioned to really fuck with Assad's day should he deploy. His jets may not even make it to their targets. Hillary has already relayed the message through appropriate channels.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)I have as hard a line on chemical weapons as anyone, but I also know we have gotten wrong before and been duped before. I wonder if this is calling Assad's bluff, if he really is preparing to use sarin gas, or if it is the foundation for a justification of NATO involvement?
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)CNN cannot be trusted whatsoever.
Hayabusa
(2,135 posts)that all dictators should know: the entire world looking at you and then utterly destroying you and your regime.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)According to one of them, negotiations for the relocation of Assad and his party are on ongoing.
I think that it was Al Jazira who said that the top generals had to find a nice place to land, as well, because they'll be dead if left in Syria, and they're the ones with control of the weapons if Assad helicopters out.
I say, throw money at them. Syria is Russia's baby, but they'd want a long term lease on their Med port in Syria, Tarsus, I think. Somehow, the opposition, which may include Al Q, probably wouldn't go for it.
Would Venezuela take them?
Paraguay?
Maybe Argentina would do it for some debt forgiveness. Lovely climate I'm told, and the money would go a long way.
Substantive edit: I'm not working right now--I can get a temp job when I'm ready so it's not so bad. So I read around the net, and not always in nice places. I have serious concern that some of "Syrian" opposition are very serious Islamic radicals who are not going to play nice with the population once Assad is gone. They may treat women like the Taliban, and they may kill Christians and non-Sunnis.
The Turks, IMHO and it is a long story, are no longer secular, and who knows who they would support.
I'm afraid that Syria, or at least parts of it, will turn into another Afghanistan, where we get the bad guys out (this time Assad, that time the USSR), but our guys turn out to be even worse.
In my net wanderings, I have read that Susan Rice, Hilary Clinton and Samantha Power, filled with guilt from Rwanda, convinced Obama to go into Libya and overthrow Gadaffi as a humanitarian cause. I've posted about Rice here, and you can check out her Wiki. From memory, Hillary carries tremendous guilt about our failure to intervene in Rwanda, and Samantha Powers is a terrific advocate for human rights.
Nonetheless, even though we are a great power still in some ways, the whole world is not like Kansas, and even though our hearts are in the right place, there's not much we can do without causing even more problems. I thought that was the lesson we learned in such places as Vietnam, El Salvador and Afghanistan (maybe twice). Hillary should know that, Power may not have been living here then and Rice is too young for Vietnam and, I think, El Salvador. Nonetheless, guilt as the moving factor of foreign policy doesn't work, which is why I was doubtful about Clinton as SOS and one reason why I'm doubtful of Rice.
Reportedly, Gates, and I think Panetta and maybe others didn't want to go into Libya. Perhaps they did it because the Brits were asking and they've always said "yes" when we've asked. No comment on the French. No German boots in the sand, of course. (How long they can avoid combat because of their history, I don't know, but if they get any oil from this they should pay in gold).
I'm not saying that Gadaffi was a prize, but he had been cooperating with the west and selling the Europeans oil. Remember, Obama did not come up with this idea by himself. Remember, he didn't want to go to Iraq.
My personal view of what we were doing in Benghazi, which was not an embassy and not a consulate, was intelligence gathering and trying to get arms out of the hands of the guys that we had rented to take down Gaddafi. Either they were pure intelligence types, or had worked closely with them, which is why our wonderful Ambassador, the computer guy and the two ex-seals who died were in Benghazi and why no one is really talking sense about what happened in that place.
Meanwhile, weapons, maybe ours, maybe the Qataris are probably in Syria and may be used against Assad and against anyone else who is not with them. I fear, that whatever happens, we will have a nest of vipers in Syria, and we will have something to do with why they're there.
Anyway, I hope that no chemical weapons are used in Syria, and that it has a reasonable government. I'm not counting on it though, and I think that we may end up with another mess and blood on our hands. And for what. A Nobel? I think not.
Well, for what 2:00 am ramblings are worth.
applegrove
(118,696 posts)know what the outcome of those letters were.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)I thought that Libya would turn out badly, and I was very reluctant to rejoice at the Arab Spring.
IMHO, and I'm no expert, the rest of the world simply doesn't function like the U.S., or even like our cousins in the English-Speaking world and Western Europe. To think that they do invites bad endings. Yes, Vietnam is now stable and looking to us for protection against their eternal enemy, China. Nicaragua is a functioning democracy, sort-of, but El Salvador is a land of sorrows that has sent its troubled sons to our cities. I know. I live in one of them. To think that we could change Iraq, let alone Afghanistan is pure hubris.
But hubris, it seems, still reigns in our capital. Hubris and misplaced guilt about what we could never do.
I'm a little too young to really be a child of the '60s. Our President is far too young to understand any of it and he has shown his ignorance on a regular basis. He sees the '60s as a repugnant mix of sex and drugs and rock and roll without understanding its better quality, which was the thought that the world could be a much better place if people would just talk to one another. Talking certainly beats fighting, and I always endorse it over the other choice. Nonetheless, talking to people who do not want to listen or who are listening to something else is pointless.
At one point, I thought that if we got out of Iraq and Afghanistan and declined further adventures into the Islamic world and others of which we know little, we could then repair ourselves and do good when we could see that it would not involve us in greater harm.
Unfortunately, it seems now that our President, our Secretary of State and our Ambassador to the UN have sent us into yet another area of which we know little on a mission little advised by what someone has surely learned. How quickly we can extricate ourselves and let others find their own fates for themselves, I do not know.
JustAnotherGen
(31,828 posts)Samantha Power. I don't think she has guilt - but DID Clinton might - not just for Rwanda - but Bosnia.
This time - she can't write it off as "tribal". I don't think Power will allow it.
But I don't believe we can act - we can only react.
amandabeech
(9,893 posts)Samantha Power was being touted as the top candidate for the UN position if current Amb. Rice should be confirmed as SOS.
Good point about Bosnia. I was having serious family problems during the worst of that and my memory is really blurry. Schrbreniza (sp) does stand out, however.
pampango
(24,692 posts)have missiles filled with bad stuff. Using them is a whole different story.
RandiFan1290
(6,237 posts)Talk is cheap
http://www.todaysmilitary.com/contact-a-recruiter
Selatius
(20,441 posts)MFM008
(19,818 posts)I think I would believe President Obama if he said there will be consequences for using these...
applegrove
(118,696 posts)he might like to go out it a 'hail of sarin' and make it into the history books that way.