Posted on 12/11/2011 11:46:53 AM PST by jhpigott
The Syrian regime, which has endured nine months of civil unrest spurred by the Arab Spring as it swept across the Middle East, has armed its medium-range missile arsenal with chemical warheads.
According to a report published by the Sabah daily Sunday, Damascus armed 600 one-ton chemical warheads to use in the event of a foreign military intervention. Furthermore, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the deployment of 21 missile launchers along its border with Turkey. Syria’s medium-range missiles that can be equipped with chemical warheads have a range of up to 1,300 kilometers and would include the southern and central provinces of Turkey.
(Excerpt) Read more at todayszaman.com ...
Unfortunately, that won’t work. Syria was more than willing to be Iran’s proxy, was very active in supporting the anti-Iraq forces and Hezbollah. And the Russians were more than willing to give their tyrannical little buddy any weapons he wanted.
Unless pencil-neck is overthrown, he will keep butchering his own people until they finally surrender, and then he will go right back to trying to foment war as he did before. And those chemical warheads will still be there, for him to use any time he wants to.
No need to mention, I suppose, the Norks trying to help him develop either nuclear weapons, or essential parts for them for the Iranians.
Also looks like Assad may be having “internal” issues -
Syrian opposition sources: Defense minister killed
Published: 12.11.11, 21:12 / Israel News
Syrian opposition officials in London reported that Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria Assef Shawkat husband of Bushra Assad was killed during an argument with his aide General Ali Mamlouk.
According to the report, which has yet to be confirmed by official sources, Shawkat was secretly rushed to hospital in Damascus where he died of his wounds. Other sources claim he’s in a coma. (Roee Nahmias)
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?id=2818977%2C15
Assad is taking risks just by arming the missiles. It appears that the loyalty of the military is slipping. An opposition group of former military recently pulled off a daring raid agaomst a high value loyalist military facility. The rebels will, rightly, fear those missiles. They may make capturing one a priority. Suppose they do and fire it. It hardly matters where it goes as the backlash will destroy Assad no matter where it lands.
That’s just one possibility. Leaks or accidents, depending on whether this is a two-part gas, can be as deadly as any rebel attack. It seems that with the situation as tense as it is Assad has unnecessarily raised the disaster potential. I think NATO learned its lesson in Libya. The probability that we’ll intervene is miniscule and Hillary would be smart to take that option off the table to see if the situation can be calmed down.
Turkey has overextended itself against the Kurds and Israel and is unlikely to pose a threat to Assad. But if a missile is launched into Turkey the Turks will have no choice but to respond and they can do any number of things under the table to destabilize Assad without taking overt, actionable military action.
“So that’s where all the WMDs we watched being trucked across the Iraq-Syrian border ended up...”
Yep!
After the Russian Army helped Iraq dismantle the WMD facilities, they trucked them up to Syria.
Too bad Bush decided not to put Russia & Syria on the spot by revealing the proof!
Wars and rumors of wars.
I agree that the chances of any direct US intervention in Syria is low, but if Assad decides to drop the hammer on Homs (as it appears he is getting ready to do) the likelihood of some kind of foreign intervention (probably Turkish, with some Arab League backing - maybe the French coming in and setting up “humanitarian cooridors) increases significantly.
I think Assad is not trying too hard to conceal the deployment of these chem warheads on his IRBMs (presuming the report is accurate) as a signal for anyone considering intervenig to back off.
He killed the husband of a ruling family member.
Yes, there is dissension, and some may be within the ruling elite.
Perhaps there are some sane enough to avoid suicide?
But W didn’t do anything about it! He could have bombed the convoys,he could have intercepted them with SOF etc..,nothing like never existed. Why?
Maybe His Excellency can zoom in and scoop them up on AF1.
” He could have bombed the convoys “
I think I remember that we did try an ‘air interdiction’ on one of the convoys to Syria in the runup to the ground invasion, and there was such a howling and gnashing-of-teeth about *Russian* ‘civilian’ casualties that the rest of the convoys were allowed to proceed unmolested....
0bama don't have the gonads to do anything in Syria, not before the election anyhow!
I’m pretty sure Syria already had chemical weapons. That doesn’t mean they didn’t get more though.
Sequels and rumors and sequels. They tried this bit back in July 07 and lost about 30 scientists in a sad work accident.
Maybe this time around they used robotics.
I think we’ve just found Saddam’s WMD.
MI Ping!
MI Ping!
Isaiah 17:1
The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Birth pangs.
...600 one-ton chemical warheads... deployment of 21 missile launchers along its border with Turkey... a range of up to 1,300 kilometers...Hey, Erdogan, ya dumb-ass! Want to repeat your whole "casus belli" diatribe? A-hole!
We’ll see your Chemical Weapons and ante up a nice mushroom maker.
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