Politics of the Free - It’s because Democrats, stupid. - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

World at one 4/4/17, 9 minutes in.

The former ambassador is Peter Ford. There was a UN investigation on Idlib. He cites it.

The shill ("independent expert on chemical and biolohical weapons") offers no facts. He cites an "international inquiry". I smell bullshits

Lord_Griff

Radio 4 this morning, "You can't release Sarin by bombing a weapons cache", followed by some senior military chap stating "this was a targeted bombing, hitting runways, planes and infrastructure but we made sure not to hit the stored chemical weapons"...

Lord_Griff

Strange that UN weapons inspectors were denied plane logs and inspection of airfield by the Ruskies tho'.

hunk

See, this is what happens when you appoint a president who trusts tv news over his intelligence service reports.
'I saw it on Fox news last night, it was horrible!'
'Assad must pay......'

dynamiteReady

GooberTheHat wrote:

Tosh. First of all where is the evidence Assad did this? Secondly, why would he do it? He's winning.

Agreed. But at this stage, we're probably not going to see a proper investigation. Before the action, the Russians were also in the frame as possible perpetrators.

Were they?

I didn't follow up the initial story on the net, but I remembered the early BBC reports saying that both Russian and Syrian planes were flying sorties in the region at the time, and that they couldn't determine which of the planes dropped the weapons.

Sounded like a very complicated and sensitive one to work out.

Then suddenly, 'TRUMP!' out of nowhere.

hunk

Scenario1 (Official White House stance): impulsive, fox news, breitbart loving Trump shoots from the hip. Trump screams: "Assad you are going down you child poisoning freak!"

Scenario2 (tin foil hat ed.): Ruskies bomb chemical weapons depot 'accidentally' giving Trump an excuse to remove pesky Assad in the chaos. Was it planned by the Russians and did the US know? Only Trump and Putin know for sure.

Yossarian

Additional tin-foil: scenario 2 allows Russia and the US to stage a diplomatic spat and try to obfuscate Putin having Trump in his pocket.

Lord_Griff

Syrian Information Minister "Yeah, yeah we knew this was coming"

hunk

Bonus indeed. Would be quite the team effort.
Also: oil! To the victor the spOils!

Brooks

If there's one thing Fucking Donald deffo cares about very deeply it's the welfare of foreign remote brownies.

Brooks

There's going to be more of this, sadly. Military japes are a channel of relatively unhampered Presidential agency, unlike all his legislative schemes which keep falling over themselves opposed.

dynamiteReady

What stinks about this, is the involvement of the Russians.

If this was Assad's regime, then why would they go through the trouble of making up such a laboured and flaky excuse to cover for them ('rebels had a weapons dump')? They should have just condemned the attack, and added that they hope that Assad will be exonerated.

cockbeard

Lord_Griff wrote:

Strange that UN weapons inspectors were denied plane logs and inspection of airfield by the Ruskies tho'.

The Russians have been known to get a bit tetchy around airports. I recall being quite nervous in Pristina

Lord_Griff

Because of the STDs? Heard she's a goer though.

pantyfire

Its very suspicious that the Trump gets to show off some military might just after he's looked weak i.e. the dropping of his care act.

WorKid

How has it gone over in the US?

Feels like another election promise abandoned.

dynamiteReady

The Breitbart comments section has literally exploded on this.

Plenty of divided opinion there.

Very little of the 'fuck yeah' I'd expected. Which is somewhat heartening, but the circumstances certainly aren't.

WorKid

I'd have thought conservatives are pissed off that a guy campaigning on an isolationist America First approach has now started armed conflict with a foreign country 11 weeks in to job.

GooberTheHat

It's not as if America need to get any more involved unless they choose to. It really is a flash in the pan.

GooberTheHat

Roujin wrote:

I was actually laughing when I heard they used 60 cruise missiles for the strike.

Must have been sorting their use by date I guess!

That's not really a massive amount if you're trying to put an airfield and associated equipment out of action.

Roujin

59 flashes in the pan to be precise.

Hey do the US have any upcoming arms deals with middle eastern oil producing countries who might like to see what a long range cruise missile can do?

hunk

Trumpa Loompas will luv Trump regardless.
They'll luv him even more once he attemps to reel in the spoils: Syrian oil and lucrative building contracts. There's much money to be made in rebuilding Syria.
Essentially Asad isn't needed anymore now that IS is marginalised and almost defeated. Truth is, the US and Russia would rather see him gone and replaced with a more 'agreeable' ruler. Installing a puppet state if you will. What better excuse than chemical weapons of mass destruction to remove Asad from power?
Win-win for both Russia and the US.

Also, Trump feeling concerned and responsible for little brown muslim kids dying in the middle east? I don't buy it for one second.

GooberTheHat

59 isn't a lot.

cockbeard

These were cruise missiles, aren't they still well over a million each?

Or have they spent last year firing hundreds at them but just decide to report on this one now as it fits a different narrative

Roujin

According to CNN they were Tomahawks.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/06/politics/tomahawk-missiles-explainer/

So they drop 59,000 lbs of payload and spent ~45m dollars on taking out a single airbase.

Seems like a big fuck off show of force to me than a measured response. Since the US knew exactly which airbase they were aiming at they could have sent a warning to Assad by taking out the runways.

dynamiteReady

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/steve-bannon-fired-donald-trump-consider-reince-preibus-white-house-chief-of-staff-strategist-a7672171.html

Fuck knows where all this is going.

Dinostar77

They took out planes, supply depots, refuelling tankers, buildings and runway, hence the amount used. The missiles probably had a best before date, so might as well use them or junk them.

This should have been the response 4 years ago but Obama chickened out. Let's see what Russia do now.

WorKid

Good to see World Police are back.

[Deleted User]

Jobs numbers are bad today, i see.

dynamiteReady

WorKid wrote:

Good to see World Police are back.

Howdy, Stranger!

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