ISIL, ISIS, Daesh discussion thread.
- Thread starter RoboCod
- Start date
The way you said turned up alive seemed to imply they were shown as (dead) victims in the videos subsequently turning up alive as in evidence of it being staged - but I don't believe that is presented in either of those links though I don't recall the whole testimony in detail.
EDIT: Also few (I don't think any but again I can't remember all the details) of the witnesses claim it to be a hoax in testimony as you are trying to represent - most of them simply say that they can't confirm an actual chemical attack took place and that the symptoms of victims mostly don't match those of a chemical attack - they don't offer an opinion on whether they thought it was real or staged.
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No, I meant turned up OK. They were never posed as dead. I should have been clearer.
Dead bodies were moved around and posed for dramatic effect according to this BBC producer in a rare fit of conscience.
https://www.rt.com/news/423780-bbc-journalist-syria-tweet/
Dread to think where all the bodies came from. The OPCW didn't even do autopsies.
I should have been more accurate on the terms they used. I should have said they didn't believe the White Helmets and saw no evidence of CW use or symptoms. Amounts to the same thing.
If they didn't think it was genuine then what is it other than a hoax?
They did offer opinions by the way.
The first, the father of the famous boy hosed down, said it was fake and there was no CW attack. He was angry his son was taken without his permission when there was nothing wrong with him.
The second, a doctor on duty that night, said people came in for smoke asphyxiation from a nearby house that had been shelled. He was clear it wasn't a CW attack, but then the White Helmets barged in shouting 'gas' and dousing people with water. He didn't believe them.
The third was someone who came in for smoke inhalation. Supported what the doctor said saying the White Helmets rushed in creating chaos dousing people with water. Said they all looked fine and couldn't see anyone suffering from anything that looked serious. Didn't think it was a CW attack and smelt nothing unusal (no chlorine then).
The fourth was a lab technician on the night. Came out - same thing. Said smoke inhalation victims, but WHs causing chaos. Saw no signs of CWs and that if it was they would have been affected too as they had no protective clothing on. Didn't believe it.
The fifth was a nurse on duty. Didn't believe it...said people came in for smoke inhalation then the WHs shouting causing panic. Checked a girl and no signs of CW exposure. Didn't see anything indicating that.
On and on it goes. Smoke inhalation victims then the WHs come in causing chaos and panic, but no signs at all of CW or chlorine exposure.
Matches up with what Robert Fisk reported speaking to doctors shortly afterwards.
Those people are medics in a bombed-out city. They know smoke inhalation when they see it and they didn't believe the source of these claims, the White Helmets.
Soldato
If anything its you who doesnt get it, it isnt about Assad but about Syria itself.
Look at Iraq in its current state and say with a straight face that the Iraqi people are better off.
Now forget your boner for Assad and tell me how a massive bombing campaign and then having the country overrun by jihadis is going to help the Syrian people.
Tell me why you care so much and then tell me why your cares don't extend to all nations across the world. Why Syria in particular? Go on, show me really how much you care, and not just by some words on a forum that don't matter.
Soldato
and why does James Bond care so much about my 'cares', tell me why your cares don't extend to all people across the world. Why me in particular? Go on, show me really how much you care, and not just by some words on a forum that don't matter.
lol
lol
Soldato
You've assumed your conclusion here - asserting that the airstrikes were against factories manufacturing chemical weapons. If this is not so, then it's some other military target and of course striking Syria's military assets helps those that Syria is at war with. Unless you want to argue the targets were non-military (i.e. civillian) which I don't believe you would.
Hasn't the USA intimated that they would send in fighters against the Russian airforce in areas where Russian planes would otherwise strike?
I think what we don't get is your determination to keep reframing the real events we are discussing as abstract thought experiments. "In a Douma-like scenario...", "found at the scene of a murder..." You do seem to be using generalisation in order to provide room to reconcile positions that are contradictory in the actual examples we're discussing. Your interest seems to be in arguing "is it possible" rather than "did it happen". Indeed, the latter you seem to agree it's very likely that it didn't.
I think it's worth going more specific than "Chemical Weapons". That's a suitable term to use in discussions of legality. But in a discussion of military value which you are now raising, it's too vague. The original accusations by the USA were that Assad had used Sarin gas. They've now conveniently dropped that are talking about Chlorine. My reading on the subject is that Chlorine gas is vastly less effective than Sarin gas - i.e. has far, far less military value. Indeed, it's generally not considered a very effective weapon at all. So we've gone from arguing that Assad knowingly made a huge political and strategic blunder in order to use WMD that could kill huge numbers in a town to Assad knowingly made a huge political and strategic blunder in order to kill a small number of enemy combatants. The downgrade to Chlorine has altered the proposition even further against than it was in the beginning and directly impacts your arguments about how it may have been worthwhile for Assad even though victory was ultimately pretty much assured.
Okay - you agree that AQ/IS/etc. benefit. But you argue that's not necessarily the reason it was done. So who else benefits that AQ/IS/etc. are getting collataral benefit from? Who is the intended beneficiary in your eyes, I would like to know if not them?
We're talking about trying to get rid of Assad by supporting Jihadi groups in Syria. You can say you want to get rid of Assad but not support IS/AQ if you want - that's fine. But you're commenting on a situation where that is how we are attacking Assad / Syria.
Mandatory voting we can remove from your list as irrelevant. Lots of countries have that. Should we invade Luxembourg or Brazil because they have mandatory voting? Turning to the two justifiable reasons. One - we have invaded and attacked countries. Should be invaded by China because of our invasion and occupation of Iraq? Because of our destruction of Libya? We've waged more war than Assad has if that's the criteria you want to pick. You also take US allegations as gospel in talking about gas attacks which is the point. But to keep with the analogies, we've supplied Saudi Arabia in their genocidal efforts in Yemen where they're causing starvation. Again - you're now okay with China invading us? Or lets be specific in our analogy - you'd be okay with China supplying and protecting people like the Ariana Grande bomber in Manchester?
Soldato
Worst argument in the thread.
Soldato
Yes im aware, they were supplied by many countries and I dont agree with the sanctions either, his regime should have been put to an end in the 90s.
I guess America changed their minds then eh.
Its simply not true that Iraq didnt have WMDs, as Hitchens points out.
Youre an isolationist, im not. Thats all there is to say.
Soldato
Ok Sherlock, you got all the answers with your internet skills next time I'll ask you if I ever need some information about a war zone thousands of miles away from home.
Yeah, next you'll be telling me it was our government who was behind 9/11. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, untidy truth but there it is.
Your principles are to build up a fence and let the whole world go to ****.
If we have the power to change things for the better we should.
But people like you are happy for madmen running about murdering people.
Exactly, I don't care
and neither do you. #virtuesignallingFTW
Soldato
Who says Syria will turn out like Iraq? Secondly not all the people fighting assad are jihadis. And by the way I don't think Iraq should have been invaded but that's another topic.
Target lists were published by both the US and Syrian government and broadly agreed on with some difference i.e. US claiming a facility was active, Syria claiming it had been used for chemical weapons but decommissioned years ago, US claiming a lab was for military chemical weapons, Syria claiming it was a general purpose scientific research centre, etc. The bulk of the targets were R&D/Lab facilities or alleged chemical weapon storage facilities with a few hits on an airbase allegedly used for staging chemical weapon attacks. Some of them supposedly were civilian scientific facilities with university rather than military connections... allegedly.
There is a little confusion as Israel separately appears to have carried out strikes against Iranian assets on the ground shortly after.
I don't recall so - the only exception to that I'm aware of was proximity to US forces operating with the Kurds and Eastern desert area near the border with Iraq where the US has a presence.
There are many possibilities in a theoretical situation - for instance Assad might have attempted to use an attack that had sufficient effect on the ground to increase the pressure on the rebels to give up while being so low down on the list of chemical weapons it would be hard to justify any significant attack in response to it and many more possible variants. But on the other hand the supposed attack was hardly that small - while it doesn't say how many were combatants the "official" record is upto 85 killed, 500+ injured.
Victory might have been pretty much assured but it doesn't mean that the cost of the victory was strategically a good outcome - people keep ignoring the situation on the ground for Assad at the time:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-need-of-reinforcements-as-idlib-battle-looms
There was uncertainty over Russian and Iranian ongoing involvement at the time, his forces were at an all time low - with fewer and fewer frontline forces available as they were stretched thin across the country he had regained control over - with potentially 3:1 advantage to the rebels if it came down to just Syrian government forces going at Idlib alone - people keep seeing the conflict from a distance and seeing a picture of Assad winning as if he'd become some unstoppable force - the truth is a bit different. Douma had twice proved costly versus its strategic significance with for instance more tanks lost in action trying to take it than the whole rest of that campaign combined.
It's not an argument, it's a point and it was proven just beautifully. Great to sit on a forum and sound off about **** like we're all authorities on the matter though eh? The last few pages have been particularly delectable.
This question was asked quite a lot on Facebook/etc at the time by the conspiracy theorists, it's actually a very simple answer, he wouldn't.
Of course the mistake they were all making is asking such an invalid question in the first place, because the Assad regime didn't start using chemical weapons at Douma they started six years prior, the only reason the Douma attack made the news in the west or gained the attention of western leaders is because it was originally mis-reported as a Sarin attack rather than just another one of the regular Chlorine attacks the Assad regime usually made (which Douma turned out to be).
Some scraps of left over programs and abandoned CWs that were years past their sell-by date and had turned to mush is of no threat. The whole drivel at the time was Saddam had a functioning biological & CW program and were close to nuclear weapons (not a single part buried in a garden) and that they posed an IMMINENT THREAT to the UK, US et al. 45 minutes, remember? Complete lies - nothing remotely functioning was found.
Oh yeah, remember the rubbish about him being in league with Al Qaeda? Imagine telling someone from 2003 at the height of the Al Qaeda hysteria that 16 years later the US & UK would now be on the same side as them in Syria going so far to defend them militarily. All into the memory hole.
War is peace, ignorance is strength and we have always been at war with Eurasia...
Yes, I am isolationist as I don't brush away hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of deaths and don't think we should attack other countries when it's not in self defence and based on fiction.
I was once a fan of Christopher Hitchens too reading God is not Great and so on and was blown away by his oratory and writing skills. Which is why I thought it was such a shame when I later discovered his awful warmongering views.
Here's George Galloway demolishing him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2JVKeOExEE
As Galloway said Hitchens and the other pro-war people are always ready to 'fight to the last drop of someone else's blood'.
The only Hitchens worth listening to, on matters of war at least, is his brother Peter Hitchens.
Well turns out the 'conspiracy theorists' were right - Douma was staged.
http://syriapropagandamedia.org/wor...lleged-chemical-attack-in-douma-in-april-2018
An OPCW report which had been suppressed was leaked earlier this month and shows their own engineers saying the chlorine gas cylinders alleged to have been used in the attack were likely manually placed as they couldn't replicate them being dropped from the height of a helicopter as was alleged by the jihadi rebels and the British-founded and funded White Helmets who provided a lot of the evidence and propaganda videos.
The OPCW is now compromised so all previous claims of CW use by Assad are in doubt. Now this is the only final nail in the coffin as the allegations were already weak.
If any of this was argued in court it would be laughed out the door. There's a higher burden of proof when it comes to someone shoplifting a Snickers than there is for accusing Assad of 'gassing his own people'.
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So Al Qaeda is your friend? Got it. Who do you think takes over if the Syrian Government is toppled? The imaginary 'moderate' rebels? Don't hear too much about them nowadays
I saw how things changed for 'the better' in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Left in ruins, jihadis running amok, open air slave markets and millions of migrants and refugees destined for Europe. Great success!
OK, so you want to attack Syria and Saudi Arabia. Any other countries for your list? We might have to increase our defence spending for your military crusade though and eventually we are going to attack a country with an ally that will put us in our place, but it's all worth it I'm sure.
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Soldato
Exactly, I don't care
You do care about the situation in Syria, its why you never leave. You're always there in the background looking upset throwing in the odd comment which really just asks remember me?