Author Topic: The barbarity that is Syria  (Read 381325 times)

Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3480 on: March 9, 2017, 09:59:20 pm »
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Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3481 on: March 9, 2017, 10:45:40 pm »
Syria is back on the radar, looks like Trump is in line.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2017/march/08/trump-invades-syria/





I'm beginning to think the titles of these websites you are linking to are made up parodies!

I haven't clicked them yet to find out, as I'm not too into teabagging Ayn Rand

Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3482 on: March 10, 2017, 12:33:03 am »
I'm beginning to think the titles of these websites you are linking to are made up parodies!

I haven't clicked them yet to find out, as I'm not too into teabagging Ayn Rand

Maybe this source is more palatable to your tastes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/08/marines-have-arrived-in-syria-to-fire-artillery-in-the-fight-for-raqqa/?utm_term=.7369d60e94f9
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Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3483 on: March 10, 2017, 08:29:50 am »
Maybe this source is more palatable to your tastes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/03/08/marines-have-arrived-in-syria-to-fire-artillery-in-the-fight-for-raqqa/?utm_term=.7369d60e94f9

Much more, thank you.

The headline "Marines have arrived in Syria to fire artillery in the fight for Raqqa" is far more accurate than "Trump invades Syria", for a start

Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3484 on: March 10, 2017, 10:23:28 am »
Much more, thank you.

The headline "Marines have arrived in Syria to fire artillery in the fight for Raqqa" is far more accurate than "Trump invades Syria", for a start

I find it quite depressing that you take comfort in the words/ tone of the Washington Post story. What has happened is a very significant escalation of US military involvement in Syria....conventional forces, Marines and Army infantrymen, now have 'boots on the ground' about to engage in combat.  We have been waiting to see Trump's approach to Syria, now we have it.  Instead of being largely ignored, or at least underplayed, in the media (the BBC and the Washington Post had it buried in a subsection) it should be headlines. More attention was given to US Military nude picture scandals.

Obama had been toying with arming the Kurds in their preparation to engage ISIS in Raqqa, but chose to defer (or was requested to defer) to the incoming administration.  Trump, as he's wont to do, left us dangling.  On the one hand he's criticized US involvement in Middle East wars costing 'Trillions' and the lives of US servicemen, for objectives of more concern to local interests than the US'; but on the other hand he promised to destroy ISIS. Well, now we have it: not only is he arming the Kurds, he's supporting them with US troops on the ground. Not covertly, not as 'advisors', but in active combat.  I believe Obama was threatened with impeachment if he put troops in to Syria without Congressional approval, we'll see if the same holds true for Trump. (or maybe that's the plan!).

Whatever the outcome, it won't be pretty.  ISIS is now cornered and will fight to the last.  They abandoned Mosul & Aleppo, but as I see it Raqqa will be a 'last stand'.  And there is a significant civilian population, it will be at least as ugly as Mosul & Aleppo, for sure. Howitzer shells from 20-30 miles will not be so discriminatory.

If the operation is a success and ISIS is defeated, what then?  Will the US withdraw?  Turkey won't be happy to leave the Kurds with a defacto state on their doorstep.  So I expect the US will remain in situ.  Syria will become Balkanized, not quite meeting the McCain/ Graham goal of Assad regime change, but consistent with Hillary's plans, little change there.

And if its not a success?  If US troops are embroiled and fatalities/ injuries result?  What will be the domestic reaction?  What is the potential for further direct conflict with SAA & Russia?

What is the the final objective of the action, anyway?  Please expand, Donald.

« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 10:45:43 am by RedBootsTommySmith »
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Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3485 on: March 10, 2017, 11:36:29 am »
I find it quite depressing that you take comfort in the words/ tone of the Washington Post story.

Sorry, I haven't got past your first line. I will do when I'm less busy at work, but not motivated to because it's such nonsense.

One headline is more clear and accurate than the other. That was my only point. The rest is an emotive leap you have taken, in at the deep end.

Wanting accurate journalistic representation does not equal 'I love this story and all it's content!'
« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 11:38:42 am by Classycara »

Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3486 on: March 10, 2017, 11:42:05 am »
You will see in the sourced Washington Post article that you posted, that this is not 'Trump invading Syria'. Or even an initiative he set in motion.

Quote
"For this deployment, the Marines were flown from Djibouti to Kuwait and then into Syria, said another defense official with direct knowledge of the operation.

The official added that the Marines’ movement into Syria was not the byproduct of President Trump’s request for a new plan to take on the Islamic State but that it had “been in the works for some time.”

Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3487 on: March 10, 2017, 04:12:21 pm »
You will see in the sourced Washington Post article that you posted, that this is not 'Trump invading Syria'. Or even an initiative he set in motion.

From the same source:

A Pentagon plan for the coming assault on Raqqa, the Islamic State capital in Syria, calls for significant U.S. military participation, including increased Special Operations forces, attack helicopters and artillery, and arms supplies to the main Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighting force on the ground, according to U.S. officials.......

....President Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to expand the fight against the militants in Syria, Iraq and beyond, received the plan Monday after giving the Pentagon 30 days to prepare it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-plan-to-seize-raqqa-calls-for-significant-increase-in-us-participation/2017/03/04/d3205386-00f3-11e7-8f41-ea6ed597e4ca_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.38f45d848786

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Offline Zeb

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3488 on: March 10, 2017, 04:25:42 pm »
From November 2016:

Quote
Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s claim last week that the assault on Raqqa, the capital of the so-called Islamic State, was “within weeks” was a surprise to the commanders planning the war, who believe local troops will not enter the city for months, three defense officials told The Daily Beast.
One official told The Daily Beast the attack on the ISIS capital could be six months away.
“The broader question of retaking Raqqa and who does that is still open and we’re gonna continue to discuss that with all of our coalition partners,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, explained to reporters Wednesday.
The local forces needed have not all been identified, their roles have yet to be defined, the weapons and training have yet to be allocated, and the so-called Islamic State has yet to be cut off from supply lines and foreign fighter flows that allow it to build up its defensive measures, officials said.
“Weeks?!” one commander said when he first heard the weeks-long timeline to be within the city limits of Raqqa. “I’ve never heard anyone say that.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/03/pentagon-walks-back-promise-to-attack-isis-capital-asap.html

Meet the new plan, same as the old plan, now with recognition that the US isn't going to be giving the Kurds their own artillery.

I'm old enough to remember when Trump had a super secret special plan to defeat IS which he couldn't tell anyone.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 04:31:56 pm by Zeb »
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Offline Zeb

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3490 on: March 10, 2017, 04:43:43 pm »
Are you reading what you're posting Tommy? Obama's plan, after the Turkish 'force' turned out to be made out of promises and thin air, was to arm the Kurds and to provide them with mission specific support to take Raqqa. Trump came in and so "oh no no this plan is awful". Obama's staff said "give them time to understand the options and they'll agree with us". News just in: US forces to provide artillery support for Kurdish forces to take Raqqa as well as continuing to supply equipment/arms to the forces under the SDF banner. This was set in motion under Obama. For better or worse. This is the US military's preferred option so it's no surprise it's the same fundamental idea.
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Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3491 on: March 10, 2017, 05:11:01 pm »
Yes, Zeb, granted on the plan to provide arms.  I think the US ground force support is a new dimension, however?  Agree with your premise, meet the new plan, same as the old, but the 'boots on the ground' is a new escalation. And in latest reports, the 'boots on the ground' are also being deployed to prevent different factions on the same side from warring with each other.  Kind of sounds like a semi-permanent proposition. (With 1,000 more troops on standby in Kuwait).



« Last Edit: March 10, 2017, 05:17:43 pm by RedBootsTommySmith »
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Offline Zeb

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3492 on: March 10, 2017, 05:51:40 pm »
Yes, Zeb, granted on the plan to provide arms.  I think the US ground force support is a new dimension, however?  Agree with your premise, meet the new plan, same as the old, but the 'boots on the ground' is a new escalation. And in latest reports, the 'boots on the ground' are also being deployed to prevent different factions on the same side from warring with each other.  Kind of sounds like a semi-permanent proposition. (With 1,000 more troops on standby in Kuwait).

There are already 500 US special forces in Syria so even that part... and the obvious problems with that have already flared up to with the Syrians/Russians bombing in proximity to them. I think the British press have reported 200 of our special forces across Syria and Iraq too. Goodness knows who all else is there and in what numbers. Not disagreeing at all with some very valid and reasonable questions you're asking (the big one being "and then what?" after the Kurds have fought what will be a long, bloody and nasty fight for Raqqa), just wary of the "this is an invasion of Syria by Trump" idea. It's been a very slow escalation/intervention as the US have grappled with the failures of earlier attempts to create viable opposition to IS (and Assad).
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Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3493 on: March 13, 2017, 04:22:03 pm »
Would like to see the day western troops dont set foot in foreign lands.

Its the same thing over and over again.

Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3494 on: March 13, 2017, 04:25:42 pm »
Would like to see the day western troops dont set foot in foreign lands.

Its the same thing over and over again.

Genuine questions:

How do you feel about Iranian troops in foreign lands? And Russian troops in foreign lands?

Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3495 on: March 13, 2017, 06:45:50 pm »
Genuine questions:

How do you feel about Iranian troops in foreign lands? And Russian troops in foreign lands?

Also disgusting.


Offline RedBootsTommySmith

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3496 on: March 31, 2017, 12:38:25 am »
NEW YORK, March 30 (Reuters) - The United States’ diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration’s initial and public stance on Assad’s fate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-stance-assad_us_58dd7102e4b08194e3b889a1

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future of President Assad “will be decided by the Syrian people.”
« Last Edit: March 31, 2017, 12:40:59 am by RedBootsTommySmith »
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Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3497 on: March 31, 2017, 09:51:01 am »
NEW YORK, March 30 (Reuters) - The United States’ diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration’s initial and public stance on Assad’s fate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/us-stance-assad_us_58dd7102e4b08194e3b889a1

Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future of President Assad “will be decided by the Syrian people.”

The Obama regime also never wanted Assad gone. 


Earlier in the day, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future of President Assad “will be decided by the Syrian people.”

What does that mean?  Elections lol.



Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3498 on: March 31, 2017, 11:02:26 am »
The Obama regime also never wanted Assad gone. 


Are you trying to equate American democracy with Assad's authoritarianism there? If so, hell of a false equivalence

And what do you think about that view you've ascribed to Obama? Generally a good or bad policy?
« Last Edit: March 31, 2017, 11:05:35 am by Classycara »

Offline Giono

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3499 on: March 31, 2017, 11:21:25 am »
Domestically, Obama was taking heat over Libya.

Internationally he was concerned about ISIS and was not keen on creating a vacuum in Syria.

Not surprising that regime change in Syria was something he was not focused on.
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Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3500 on: March 31, 2017, 11:49:42 am »
Are you trying to equate American democracy with Assad's authoritarianism there? If so, hell of a false equivalence

And what do you think about that view you've ascribed to Obama? Generally a good or bad policy?

No equation.

It was bad for Obama to ever mention the red line of chemical weapons as once Assad used them there was response.

The policy of training and arming rebels to fight ISIS instead of Assad was a bad policy.  Airstrikes against ISIS in Syria in turn benefited the regime and its Shia militia so I don't see how this can ever be described as good.  Once ISIS go those same rebels will be used to fight any group which isn't towing the line so again the focus isn't on getting rid of Assad.

 

Offline rawcusk8

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3501 on: April 5, 2017, 08:12:25 am »
Gassing his own people according to reports, Russia says the gas leak came from weapons that rebel forces were holding. What a messed up world we live in, no value for life. Genuine question - Wasnt Gaddafi toppled for being an oppresing tyrant?
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Offline classycarra

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3502 on: April 5, 2017, 09:42:06 am »
Gassing his own people according to reports, Russia says the gas leak came from weapons that rebel forces were holding. What a messed up world we live in, no value for life. Genuine question - Wasnt Gaddafi toppled for being an oppresing tyrant?

Harder for Syrians to topple Assad while he has Russian weapons, including chemical weapons, and Iranian soldiers and militants.

Offline rawcusk8

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3503 on: April 5, 2017, 12:19:28 pm »
Harder for Syrians to topple Assad while he has Russian weapons, including chemical weapons, and Iranian soldiers and militants.
Ah, so Nato and the Usa dont want to mess with them?
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Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3504 on: April 5, 2017, 12:53:29 pm »
Ah, so Nato and the Usa dont want to mess with them?

Yes they do.  Turkey arms the rebels, the US trains and arms some as do the Saudi and Qataris.  The issue however is this all done so they fight ISIS and not Assad.  The worst thing about the fight against Assad was elements decided that fighting ISIS to keep getting outside support was more of a priority than fighting Assad, Hezbollah and his Iranian Militia.

Assad is the worst of them all and priority should be against him first and foremost.



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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3505 on: April 5, 2017, 05:40:07 pm »
Isis are perfect for Assad, it means the world turns a blind eye to his massacres because no matter how much of a tyrant he is, Isis are worse, and if he falls, they make take over, and no one wants that.
In the mean time he carry on testing chemical weapons on his people.
Its not the first time he uses chemical weapons either, couple of years back 3 thousand got gassed in their sleep, and I was attacked on here for mentioning it, because he had fooled a lot of international media into thinking that hes fighting Isis.

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3506 on: April 5, 2017, 07:00:22 pm »
Probably better in here than the Trump threads...

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Offline rawcusk8

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3507 on: April 5, 2017, 07:39:19 pm »
Thanks for the replies, folks.
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Offline puroresu_kid

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3508 on: April 5, 2017, 11:25:28 pm »
Isis are perfect for Assad, it means the world turns a blind eye to his massacres because no matter how much of a tyrant he is, Isis are worse, and if he falls, they make take over, and no one wants that.
In the mean time he carry on testing chemical weapons on his people.
Its not the first time he uses chemical weapons either, couple of years back 3 thousand got gassed in their sleep, and I was attacked on here for mentioning it, because he had fooled a lot of international media into thinking that hes fighting Isis.

They are perfect for the coalition as well. Noone in the media questions bombs dropped and civilian deaths in ISIS territory. The US condemning this while they use white phosphorus in Mosul is laughable. 

200 civilians were killed in mosul last week yet nobody says a word.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/03/iraq-civilians-killed-by-airstrikes-in-their-homes-after-they-were-told-not-to-flee-mosul/

It's disgusting how it seems anything goes in ISIS territory as its easy just to pin it on ISIS.

If this chemical attack had happened in Raqqa would this of got the same kind of condemnation and attention?  I think not.

« Last Edit: April 6, 2017, 12:14:04 pm by puroresu_kid »

Offline kcbworth

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3509 on: April 7, 2017, 03:24:06 am »
Shit

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3510 on: April 7, 2017, 07:58:47 am »
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/the-dead-were-wherever-you-looked-inside-syrian-town-after-chemical-attack

Spoiler

'The dead were wherever you looked': inside Syrian town after gas attack
Exclusive: Kareem Shaheen reports from Khan Sheikhun, where he was the first reporter from western media to reach the site of this week’s devastating atrocity

Khan Sheikhun is a ghost town, its streets deserted and silent as though mourning the victims of the atrocity that occurred here two days earlier.

The only reminder of what happened is a small, blackened, crater near the northern part of town, where a rocket laced with a nerve agent fell, killing more than 70 people in one of the worst mass casualty chemical attacks in the six-year war in Syria.

All that remains of the attack on the town in rebel-held Idlib province is a faint stench that tingles the nostrils and a small green fragment from the rocket. The houses nearby are emptied of the living.

The victims’ symptoms are consistent with sarin, the nerve agent that was dropped on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013, killing more than 1,000 people. After that attack the regime supposedly gave up its chemical weapons arsenal.

Moscow, Bashar al-Assad’s principal backer in the war, said the Syrian government had bombed a rebel-run toxic gas manufacturing plant in Khan Sheikhun, and that the gas had subsequently leaked out.

 
The Guardian, the first western media organisation to visit the site of the attack, examined a warehouse and silos directly next to where the missile had landed, and found nothing but an abandoned space covered in dust and half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure.

Residents said the silos had been damaged in air raids six months ago, and had stood unused since then.

“You can look at it ; there’s nothing there except maybe some grain and animal dung, and there’s even a dead goat there that suffocated in the attack,” one person said. Residents responded in disbelief to the Russian allegation.

There was no evidence of any building being hit in recent days or weeks near where so many people were killed and wounded by a nerve agent. The homes across the street appeared undamaged from the outside. There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road.

 The warehouse next to where the missile landed – now an abandoned space covered in dust.
 The warehouse next to where the missile landed – now an abandoned space covered in dust. Photograph: Kareem Shaheen for the Guardian
The Guardian interviewed witnesses, first responders, victims’ relatives and the wounded in an effort to reconstruct the attack. They offered fresh details that shed light on an incident that has prompted worldwide condemnation and refocused attention on the brutality of the Syrian war.

“It was like Judgment Day,” said Hamid Khutainy, a civil defence volunteer in Khan Sheikhun.

Witnesses said the air raids began shortly after 6.30am on Tuesday, with four bombings around the town. Initially they thought it was just another airstrike, until the first responders who arrived at the scene began falling to the ground.

Khutainy said: “They told us ‘HQ, we are losing control’. We had no idea what they were trying to say. Then they said, ‘come save us, we can no longer walk’. So the second and third teams went with just face masks. We could smell it from 500 metres away.”

People described a scene of utter horror at the attack site . The wounded were shaking and convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, their lips blue, passing in and out of consciousness.


“I found children lying on the ground, in their last breaths, their lips going blue,” said Abu al-Baraa, who lives nearby and rushed to help when the full extent of what had happened dawned on him.

Standing across the street from the crater left by the missile, he added: “People on the rooftops and in the basements. People on the ground in the street. Wherever you looked there were dead human beings.”


The suffocating patients and those who had died were taken to the nearby civil defence centre and the adjacent clinic built into the side of a rocky mountainous outcrop to withstand potential airstrikes. The dead were laid in a nearby shed while emergency workers hosed down the injured with water, and administered atropine, a nerve agent antidote.

But while medical workers were trying to come to grips with the crisis, between eight and 10 airstrikes targeted the medical facility and civil defence centre. The shed collapsed on the dead, and the site was put out of service.

“Maybe the pilots heard the myth that you could come back to life 48 hours after dying from sarin, so they decided to bomb them again just in case,” said an official from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group who was on the scene. “Thank God there is a Day of Judgment in the afterlife.”

The Guardian visited the destroyed medical facility and civil defence centre briefly. Local people said reconnaissance planes had been spotted in the sky earlier and believed the area might be targeted again later in the day.

The site was filled with rubble. Inside, hospital equipment, beds, surgical instruments and small boxes of medicine lay covered in dust or broken on the ground. There were no weapons in sight, and the rooms inside the cave were darkened with the electricity knocked out.


In a nearby cemetery, the graves were still fresh from funerals the day before, the red soil still upturned. In one corner 18 new graves were set up, the names barely etched with a rough chisel on the tombstones. They contained the bodies of 20 people, including two children who were buried with their mother. They were all from the same family.

Abdulhamid al-Yousef, one of the few survivors in the family, was receiving condolences at his home in Khan Sheikhun, a day after burying his wife and nine-month-old twins, Ahmed and Aya, fighting back tears.

Yousef had rushed to help the other victims of the attack. He came back instead to find that much of his family had perished, including siblings, nephews and nieces. His wife and children had rushed down to the bomb shelter in their basement, only for the toxic gas to seep into it, which killed them all.

That evening at the cemetery, he insisted on carrying his two infants in his arms to bury them himself. Almost in a trance Yousef repeated the children’s names, choking as he did so. “Aya and Ahmed, my souls. Yasser and Ahmed, my brothers who had my back. Ammoura and Hammoudi, Shaimaa, so many others,” he said.

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« Last Edit: April 7, 2017, 08:07:43 am by surfer. Fuck you generator. »

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3511 on: April 7, 2017, 12:16:54 pm »
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/the-dead-were-wherever-you-looked-inside-syrian-town-after-chemical-attack

Spoiler

'The dead were wherever you looked': inside Syrian town after gas attack
Exclusive: Kareem Shaheen reports from Khan Sheikhun, where he was the first reporter from western media to reach the site of this week’s devastating atrocity

Khan Sheikhun is a ghost town, its streets deserted and silent as though mourning the victims of the atrocity that occurred here two days earlier.

The only reminder of what happened is a small, blackened, crater near the northern part of town, where a rocket laced with a nerve agent fell, killing more than 70 people in one of the worst mass casualty chemical attacks in the six-year war in Syria.

All that remains of the attack on the town in rebel-held Idlib province is a faint stench that tingles the nostrils and a small green fragment from the rocket. The houses nearby are emptied of the living.

The victims’ symptoms are consistent with sarin, the nerve agent that was dropped on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013, killing more than 1,000 people. After that attack the regime supposedly gave up its chemical weapons arsenal.

Moscow, Bashar al-Assad’s principal backer in the war, said the Syrian government had bombed a rebel-run toxic gas manufacturing plant in Khan Sheikhun, and that the gas had subsequently leaked out.

 
The Guardian, the first western media organisation to visit the site of the attack, examined a warehouse and silos directly next to where the missile had landed, and found nothing but an abandoned space covered in dust and half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure.

Residents said the silos had been damaged in air raids six months ago, and had stood unused since then.

“You can look at it ; there’s nothing there except maybe some grain and animal dung, and there’s even a dead goat there that suffocated in the attack,” one person said. Residents responded in disbelief to the Russian allegation.

There was no evidence of any building being hit in recent days or weeks near where so many people were killed and wounded by a nerve agent. The homes across the street appeared undamaged from the outside. There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road.

 The warehouse next to where the missile landed – now an abandoned space covered in dust.
 The warehouse next to where the missile landed – now an abandoned space covered in dust. Photograph: Kareem Shaheen for the Guardian
The Guardian interviewed witnesses, first responders, victims’ relatives and the wounded in an effort to reconstruct the attack. They offered fresh details that shed light on an incident that has prompted worldwide condemnation and refocused attention on the brutality of the Syrian war.

“It was like Judgment Day,” said Hamid Khutainy, a civil defence volunteer in Khan Sheikhun.

Witnesses said the air raids began shortly after 6.30am on Tuesday, with four bombings around the town. Initially they thought it was just another airstrike, until the first responders who arrived at the scene began falling to the ground.

Khutainy said: “They told us ‘HQ, we are losing control’. We had no idea what they were trying to say. Then they said, ‘come save us, we can no longer walk’. So the second and third teams went with just face masks. We could smell it from 500 metres away.”

People described a scene of utter horror at the attack site . The wounded were shaking and convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, their lips blue, passing in and out of consciousness.


“I found children lying on the ground, in their last breaths, their lips going blue,” said Abu al-Baraa, who lives nearby and rushed to help when the full extent of what had happened dawned on him.

Standing across the street from the crater left by the missile, he added: “People on the rooftops and in the basements. People on the ground in the street. Wherever you looked there were dead human beings.”


The suffocating patients and those who had died were taken to the nearby civil defence centre and the adjacent clinic built into the side of a rocky mountainous outcrop to withstand potential airstrikes. The dead were laid in a nearby shed while emergency workers hosed down the injured with water, and administered atropine, a nerve agent antidote.

But while medical workers were trying to come to grips with the crisis, between eight and 10 airstrikes targeted the medical facility and civil defence centre. The shed collapsed on the dead, and the site was put out of service.

“Maybe the pilots heard the myth that you could come back to life 48 hours after dying from sarin, so they decided to bomb them again just in case,” said an official from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group who was on the scene. “Thank God there is a Day of Judgment in the afterlife.”

The Guardian visited the destroyed medical facility and civil defence centre briefly. Local people said reconnaissance planes had been spotted in the sky earlier and believed the area might be targeted again later in the day.

The site was filled with rubble. Inside, hospital equipment, beds, surgical instruments and small boxes of medicine lay covered in dust or broken on the ground. There were no weapons in sight, and the rooms inside the cave were darkened with the electricity knocked out.


In a nearby cemetery, the graves were still fresh from funerals the day before, the red soil still upturned. In one corner 18 new graves were set up, the names barely etched with a rough chisel on the tombstones. They contained the bodies of 20 people, including two children who were buried with their mother. They were all from the same family.

Abdulhamid al-Yousef, one of the few survivors in the family, was receiving condolences at his home in Khan Sheikhun, a day after burying his wife and nine-month-old twins, Ahmed and Aya, fighting back tears.

Yousef had rushed to help the other victims of the attack. He came back instead to find that much of his family had perished, including siblings, nephews and nieces. His wife and children had rushed down to the bomb shelter in their basement, only for the toxic gas to seep into it, which killed them all.

That evening at the cemetery, he insisted on carrying his two infants in his arms to bury them himself. Almost in a trance Yousef repeated the children’s names, choking as he did so. “Aya and Ahmed, my souls. Yasser and Ahmed, my brothers who had my back. Ammoura and Hammoudi, Shaimaa, so many others,” he said.

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This shouldn't be happening.  I just never get my head around people being able to do this to one another ever.
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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3513 on: April 7, 2017, 01:09:17 pm »
Tim Farron's response

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/07/donald-trump-syria-strike-tim-farron-assad-chemical-weapons-theresa-may?CMP=share_btn_tw

Seems a well laid out response.

Good that he recognised the consequences of abstaining his vote in parliament in 2013, cowardly though that was.

I wonder if Milliband, and the Labour people who celebrated him, will ever front up to the consequences of their party political grandstanding in that vote.

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3514 on: April 7, 2017, 01:28:54 pm »
Seems a well laid out response.

Good that he recognised the consequences of abstaining his vote in parliament in 2013, cowardly though that was.

I wonder if Milliband, and the Labour people who celebrated him, will ever front up to the consequences of their party political grandstanding in that vote.

I don't like the refusal to condemn the strike despite his feelings that it was not done in the right way. It comes across as weak. I also find it strange that he refers to an airstrike in Syria as not being "...about intervention in Syria" Bombing Syria is clearly intervening in Syria. You may think it's justified but don't kid yourself.

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3515 on: April 7, 2017, 01:35:58 pm »
Jeremy Corbyn statement on US air strikes on a Syrian air base

Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party, speaking in response to the US air strikes on a Syrian air base, said:

“The US missile attack on a Syrian government air base risks escalating the war in Syria still further.

“Tuesday’s horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account.

 “But unilateral military action without legal authorisation or independent verification risks intensifying a multi-sided conflict that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people.

“What is needed instead is to urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.

“The terrible suffering of the Syrian people must be brought to an end as soon as possible and every intervention must be judged on what contribution it makes to that outcome.

“The British government should urge restraint on the Trump administration and throw its weight behind peace negotiations and a comprehensive political settlement.”

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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3516 on: April 7, 2017, 01:45:21 pm »
Seems a well laid out response.

Good that he recognised the consequences of abstaining his vote in parliament in 2013, cowardly though that was.

I wonder if Milliband, and the Labour people who celebrated him, will ever front up to the consequences of their party political grandstanding in that vote.

Trump's launched cruise missiles at one airfield. Negotiations got 1000 tons of chemical weapons destroyed.
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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3517 on: April 7, 2017, 01:57:48 pm »
The EMBOLDENED phrase is a matter of balance and opinion - as is everything in life of course.

No time at all for what I took to be rather a cynical statement in the underlined comment.

 Of course it's a matter of opinion but I don't see how you could justify raising all that money from private school fees and then using it to give free meals to kids who's parents could easily afford them anyway. Surely it would be much better to put the resources into schools in deprived areas where resources are tight? Reducing class sizes for example?

 What's wrong with the underlined statement? Jeremy Corbyn and his team are terrible at politics. Even if a policy is well thought out and justified, they never get it across in a way that the public really likes and end up suffering in the polls for it. As the opposition, they don't have to implement their policies, they just have to dislodge the government somehow. If this policy goes some way towards doing that (it won't) then it's fair game.

 Corbyn's statement on US military action in Syria is awful today as well. I mean genuinely awful.
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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3518 on: April 7, 2017, 02:07:48 pm »
All seems like all for show to me.

Tell the Russians, who tell the Syrians and then launch a strike.  From the pics I have seen they destroyed a few empty hangars.


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Re: The barbarity that is Syria
« Reply #3519 on: April 7, 2017, 03:10:16 pm »
I don't like the refusal to condemn the strike despite his feelings that it was not done in the right way. It comes across as weak.

I hadn't considered that inconsistency - it's a good point. Especially weak considering he's never going to be encountering Trump.

Trump's launched cruise missiles at one airfield. Negotiations got 1000 tons of chemical weapons destroyed.

Sorry, just to be clear I am not meaning to diminish the power of (and the need for) negotiations, nor suggesting the action overnight was in any way ideal.