Nuclear News: Syrian Rebels in Ghouta responsible for chemical attack.

[The2ndAmendment]

http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnes...supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/

There is absolutely no reason to invade/bomb/attack Syria in any way now.

In fact, why are we helping the Al Qaeda rebels who did 9/11 in 2001 and killed all these innocent children with nerve gas?

Why is Obama supporting Muslim Extremists?

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says, "It don't matter - gonna be the first war Obama starts...

For U.S., Syria is truly a problem from hell
Fri August 30, 2013 > Samantha Power's Pulitzer-Prize winning study found U.S. very slow to fight evil regimes; Peter Bergen: Her work is a perfect description of U.S. dithering on the Syria crisis; U.S. is likely to strike Syria but lacks a strong basis in international law, he says; Bergen: U.N. won't support a strike, but NATO and Arab League could back it

What is widely recognized as the most authoritative study of the United States' responses to mass killings around the world -- from the massacres of Armenians by the Turks a century ago, to the Holocaust, to the more recent Serbian atrocities against Bosnian Muslims and the ethnic cleansing of the Tutsis in Rwanda -- concluded that they all shared unfortunate commonalities: "Despite graphic media coverage, American policymakers, journalists and citizens are extremely slow to muster the imagination needed to reckon with evil. Ahead of the killings, they assume rational actors will not inflict seemingly gratuitous violence. They trust in good-faith negotiations and traditional diplomacy. Once the killings start, they assume that civilians who keep their head down will be left alone. They urge cease-fires and donate humanitarian aid."

This is an almost perfect description of how the United States has acted over the past two years as it has tried to come up with some kind of policy to end the Assad regime's brutal war on its own people in Syria. The author who wrote the scathingly critical history of how the United States has generally dithered in the face of genocide and mass killings went on to win a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." A decade after winning the Pulitzer, that author is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Her name, of course, is Samantha Power, and she is a longtime, close aide to President Barack Obama. She started working for Obama when he was a largely unknown junior senator from Illinois.

Power called her 610-page study of genocide "A Problem from Hell" because that's how then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher referred to the Bosnian civil war and the unpalatable options available to the U.S. in the early 1990s to halt the atrocities by the Serbs. One of the U.S. officials that Power took to task in her book is Susan Rice who, as the senior State Department official responsible for Africa, did nothing in the face of the genocide unfolding in Rwanda in 1994. Rice is quoted in the book as suggesting during an interagency conference call that the public use of the word "genocide" to describe what was then going on in Rwanda while doing nothing to prevent it would be unwise and might negatively affect the Democratic Party in upcoming congressional elections.

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What justifies intervening if Syria uses chemical weapons?
Wed August 28, 2013 > President has said that Syria's use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line"; Administration might be asking: What justifies military action, and where's legal cover for it?; International law provides no clear support for intervention on humanitarian grounds; Syria is bound by the Geneva Gas Protocol, but does that cover internal conflict?

Why does the use of chemical weapons justify international retribution with military force, in a way that two years of brutal repression with tanks and planes does not? And where in international law is the legal "cover" for such action? If the Obama administration is planning for limited military strikes against Syria to hold the regime "accountable" -- in the words of senior officials -- for using chemical weapons, it is probably drafting some answers to those questions. The president put it like this in his CNN interview last week: "If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work?"

Forcibly intervening for humanitarian reasons, to protect innocents from appalling suffering, is a noble concept, one that would draw on the moral outrage felt around the world. The thrust of President Obama's argument has always been humanitarian: that using chemical weapons, which are horrendous and indiscriminate by nature, would cross a "red line." U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry amplified the argument Monday when he said, "President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people."

In other words, the "strictly legal" should not be allowed to cancel out a legitimate and necessary course of action, even if international law provides no clear support for intervention on humanitarian grounds. France, the UK, Turkey and Germany have all signaled support for such an approach. "The international community must act should the use of such weapons be confirmed," says German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. But in this instance, the international community is likely to mean NATO, not the United Nations, and that would carry much less weight in international law.

Pre-emptive force to protect U.S. allies

 

[waltky]

What ya s'posed to believe when ya gettin' mixed messages??...

US: Proven link of Assad to gas attack lacking
Sep 8,`13 WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House asserted Sunday that a "common-sense test" dictates the Syrian government is responsible for a chemical weapons attack that President Barack Obama says demands a U.S. military response.

But Obama's top aide says the administration lacks "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking. "This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said during his five-network public relations blitz Sunday to build support for limited strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad. "The common-sense test says he is responsible for this. He should be held to account," McDonough said of the Syrian leader who for two years has resisted calls from inside and outside his country to step down.

Asked in another interview about doubt, McDonough was direct: "No question in my mind." The U.S., citing intelligence reports, says the lethal nerve agent sarin was used in an Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus, and that 1,429 people died, including 426 children. The number is higher than that, said Khalid Saleh, head of the press office at the anti-Assad Syrian Coalition, who was in Washington to lobby lawmakers to authorize the strikes. Some of those involved in the attacks later died in their homes and opposition leaders were weighing releasing a full list of names of the dead. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collects information from a network of anti-government activists, says it has so far only been able to confirm 502 dead.

The actual tally of those killed by chemical weapons is scant compared to the sum of all killed in the upheaval: more than 100,000, according to the United Nations. In an interview Sunday, Assad told U.S. journalist Charlie Rose there is not conclusive evidence about who is to blame for the chemical weapons attacks and again suggested the rebels were responsible. From Beirut, Rose described his interview, which is to be released Monday on the CBS morning program that Rose hosts, with the full interview airing later in the day on Rose's PBS program.

Asked about Assad's claims there is no evidence he used the weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in London: "The evidence speaks for itself." At the same time, Obama has planned his own public relations effort. He has scheduled six network interviews on Monday and then a primetime speech to the nation from the White House on Tuesday, the eve of the first votes in Congress.

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Doubts linger over Syria gas attack responsibility
Sep 8,`13 -- The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence - no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications - connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.

In its absence, Damascus and its ally Russia have aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either. That's left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a possible military strike. The early morning assault in a rebel-held Damascus suburb known as Ghouta was said to be the deadliest chemical weapons attack in Syria's 2 1/2-year civil war. Survivors' accounts, photographs of many of the dead wrapped peacefully in white sheets and dozens of videos showing victims in spasms and gasping for breath shocked the world and moved President Barack Obama to call for action because the use of chemical weapons crossed the red line he had drawn a year earlier.

Yet one week after Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the case against Assad, Americans - at least those without access to classified reports - haven't seen a shred of his proof. There is open-source evidence that provides clues about the attack, including videos of fragments from the rockets that analysts believe were likely used. U.S. officials on Saturday released a compilation of videos showing victims, including children, exhibiting what appear to be symptoms of nerve gas poisoning. Some experts think the size of the strike, and the amount of toxic chemicals that appear to have been delivered, make it doubtful that the rebels could have carried it out.

What's missing from the public record is direct proof, rather than circumstantial evidence, tying this to the regime. The Obama administration, searching for support from a divided Congress and skeptical world leaders, says its own assessment is based mainly on satellite and signals intelligence, including intercepted communications and satellite images indicating that in the three days prior to the attack that the regime was preparing to use poisonous gas.

But multiple requests to view that satellite imagery have been denied, though the administration produced copious amounts of satellite imagery earlier in the war to show the results of the Syrian regime's military onslaught. When asked Friday whether such imagery would be made available showing the Aug. 21 incident, a spokesman referred The Associated Press to a map produced by the White House last week that shows what officials say are the unconfirmed areas that were attacked.

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[The2ndAmendment]

At the very least, it's not 100% certain that Assad is responsible, like John Kerry said.

 

[Politico]

Exactly. It's not.. That didn't stop your post though did it?

 

[The2ndAmendment]

Exactly. IT's not.. That didn't stop your post though did it?

???

What do you mean by this?

All I said was that there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that we examine and investigate; independently of the White House, before we commit to military action in Syria.

 

[Politico]

Sorry I forgot how easy you got confused.

Nuclear News: Syrian Rebels in Ghouta responsible for chemical attack.

There is absolutely no reason to invade/bomb/attack Syria in any way now.

Those are definitive statements. What part of your hypocrisy do you not get?

 

[The2ndAmendment]

Sorry I forgot how easy you got confused.

Nuclear News: Syrian Rebels in Ghouta responsible for chemical attack.

There is absolutely no reason to invade/bomb/attack Syria in any way now.

THose are definitive statements. What part of your hypocrisy do you not get?

This thread is relateivey old.

There has been some evidence to suggest that Assad actually has done the attack now, but the there is still far more evidence against it.

The "middle of the road" theory is that rogue units of the Syrian military did it without Assad's permission.

Check your timestamps on threads and posts.

However, if you want Iraq WMD'S 2.0 all over again, carry on.

 

[Crackerjaxon]

We have no responsibility at all to go in and kill people who have done nothing to us.

Obama is not the judge of the world.

 

[georgephillip]

Depends on the credibility of a Christian nun who's lived in Syria for twenty years...

"There is proof the footage of the alleged chemical attack in Syria was fabricated, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, mother superior of St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, told RT. She says she is about to submit her findings to the UN.

Mother Agnes, a catholic nun, who has been living in Syria for 20 years and has been reporting actively on what has been going on in the war-ravaged country, says she carefully studied the video featuring allegedly victims of the chemical weapons attack in the Syrian village of Guta in August and now questions its authenticity.

In her interview with RT, Mother Agnes doubts so much footage could have been taken in so little time, and asks where parents of the supposedly dead children are. She promises to send her report to the UN.

The nun is indignant with the world media for apparently turning a blind eye to the Latakia massacre by rebel extremists, which left 500 civilians including women and children dead."

Mother Agnes was referring to the rebel assault on Latakia, largely ignored by the western press:

"RT: Recently you’ve visited Latakia and the adjacent areas, you’ve talked to the eyewitnesses to the massacre of civilians carried out in Latakia by Jabhat al-Nusra. What can you tell us about it?

"MA: What I want to ask first of all is how the international community can ignore the brutal killing spree in Latakia on Laylat al-Qadr early in the morning of August 5, an attack that affected more than 500 people, including children, women and the elderly. They were all slaughtered. The atrocities committed exceed any scale. But there was close to nothing about it in the international mass media. There was only one small article in 'The Independent', I believe.

"We sent our delegation to these villages, and our people had a look at the situation on-site, talked to the locals, and most importantly – talked to the survivors of the massacre.

"I don’t understand why the Western media apply double standards in this case..."

Maybe rich John Kerry does?

Footage of chemical attack in Syria is fraud ? RT Op-Edge