Posted on 04/07/2017 6:40:54 AM PDT by kevcol
The Pentagon released a map Thursday that reportedly shows the flight pattern of a Syrian aircraft that dropped chemical weapons on civilians Tuesday.
The map was released hours after President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a northern Syrian airbase, in retaliation for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s attack.
What's the shelf life of that stuff?
My take is that Assad deliberately gassed the civilians, but I’m with you, this (deciding which side to believe) is not a battle I choose this day.
I’ll simply repeat what I said before: I’ve been a pretty harsh critic of Trump in recent past and distant, but it’s a pretty big stretch even for me to believe even he would act on faulty/flimsy intel in such a way. And he didn’t start WWIII here, it was one bombing of one base of a country whos leader isn’t really an angel himself.
There seem to be some factions around here that believe Assad is some saint in all this fighting ISIS and crusading against all of Islam with his fellow saint Putin.
They are both thugs and tyrants. I have no love loss for them or the bruising they’ve suffered.
But as you’ve said this isn’t a battle I choose to fight. If some wish to demote Trump in their minds over this, I’ll certainly loose no sleep over that.
Raytheon RTN stock up?
Trump would not have undertaken this lightly or on the fly. A lot of alternative explanations hinge on Trump being gullible and easily misled. I haven’t seen compelling evidence of that.
Speaking of evidence, does anyone really believe they’ve released everything they have? It’s as if people view a flight path, and conclude, ‘Now I know everything about this situation that Trump knows.’
The odds are a million to one that we don’t.
I think we’re strategically passed that and into a middle east hegemony war.
Wow. You and I agree so completely that our mere existence is redundant. One of us must die. ;-)
I think you’re confused as I asked no question on this thread.
You could be smarter about this as you seem to dismiss that which is murky or allude to inappropriate questions in the extreme of what constitutes evidence.
Tillerson’s narrative sucks. The script he wrote sucks. If he didn’t write the script, the script he was handed sucks. If he accepted such a script, then his judgment sucks.
His statement to the press “THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT ...” sucks.
I will write this script for him:
“We have the means to 100% verify that Syrian bombers were loaded with Sarin gas that we 100% know the Hassad military chemically produced. Our sources for this information are classified and we are 100% confident our sources have gathered genuine authentic information for us to make our decisions.”
“We know that Hassad gave the order for his bombers to be loaded with Sarin gas and to strike targets that he knew had a human shield of innocents. Hassad knowingly struck innocents using chemical weapons.”
“Speaking on behalf of the President, this is not something that was decided without careful examination of the facts. But we had to act because evil acts such as those committed by Hassad, acts that we confirmed in several ways using multiple sources, hurt us all. Like it or not, we are the international leader in diplomacy. We can not run and hide from this role that we inherited.”
“As for rumors that we are doing the bidding of the Saudis? BALDERDASH! We are well aware that the Saudis have wanted for decades to have a pipeline through Syria to Europe and that they have succeeded with past administrations in using our military as their private mercenary army. To this I say on behalf of our President to the House of Saud, GO FLY A KITE! That policy is not and never will be continued under this President.”
“Our international policy is that our United States will not allow such atrocities on innocents to occur without consequence. Our response in Syria is but a warning shot to those that would consider further atrocities in the future.”
Now let’s see if Tillerson can get his act together and get on the weekend talk shows to defend this decision in a way that the Trump movement can accept so they can move on with draining the swamp. Because we have massive spy rings on US soil and turncoats in Congress that are well on the way to being brought to justice, and this incident in Syria deflates the spirit of justice pursued in our own country unless Tillerson can make the case. The ball is in his court.
It actually tells a lot. It shows the aircraft made two passes over Khan Shaykhun, at 0537 and 0546 local time. Civil twilight began at 0549 with sunrise at 0614. The wind at Homs, to the south, was calm at 0600. If you don't believe me, look it up.
This is the perfect time to attack with sarin. Sarin is a fairly volatile liquid. The vapor disperses quickly. With those conditions, vapors will stay close to the ground and linger long enough to cause harm. There would have been enough air movement to spread the vapors around. People would have been stirring about just before sunrise. A couple of hours later, the sarin would be gone, so rescuers could indeed go in without much personal protection, if any.
I say this with many years of expertise in the area.
“Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey praise ‘courageous’ U.S. missile strike against Syria’s ‘horrific actions’.” Schumer, Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, McCain, Graham all are thrilled. All of the people who opposed Trump are celebrating. So Assad targeted children (babies) for a chemical attack. Assad appeared to be winning. Why would he do this now? When you do something you weigh the gains and losses. The Gain? A couple of dozen dead babies. What could the possible losses be? FourtySeven claims, “some factions around here that believe Assad is some saint.” Who are these people? Qadaffi was no saint but he was better than his replacement. Who will replace Assad? We have been lied to before by our own intelligence agencies. They have little credibility. The map mentions an “alleged” attack. When it is reported by the media the “alleged” is dropped even by FOX. My guess is that this is fake and Trump knows this but for some complicated reason wants people to think he has been fooled.
I will never understand how and why keyboard warriors assume so much. They get a partial amount of evidence, and from that extrapolate as if they have all the evidence.
If you are invested in assuming that Trump went off half cocked, that’s your perogative. I plan to wait and see what additional information is released. Meanwhile, I won’t assume Trump got played, because that’s inconsistent with what I’ve observed of him so far.
The gas used in this attack is more likely from Khadaffi's stockpile in Libya.
> “It actually tells a lot.”
Uh, no. It doesn’t.
The bombing raid was never in question. What is in question is what the aircraft were carrying. The map says nothing about that and could not say anything to that.
See #73 for a plausible competing argument:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3541999/posts?page=73#73
Matter of fact we know they aren't defeated. The deep state is not only deep, it consists of width & depth. Defeating them will be a monumental task. Hardly capable of being defeated in the less than 3 months time President Trump has been in office so far. It may take the entire 8 years, and then it will be questionable as to its entire elimination.
I agree, if they are defeated one at a time. But with momentum and turning some of them over onto each other, the defeat can go faster.
But in general, you have an accurate view.
In this latest foray into Syria, the Deep State is boosted and inspired they are winning because such things are right up their alley. If any of their members were thinking of turning over, they are likely not thinking it now.
I don't need a secret briefing to distrust the claims of an Al Qaeda doctor and a group known for staging fake atrocities...ymmv
No conclusive proof yet on who used this Saron gas, President Trump may have conclusive proof though. We will see what comes out in the days to follow.
I do not support this missile strike and I hope POTUSE wasn’t conned by neocons on this.
Hemmer, of Fox News, reported this morning that the cruise missiles were of a gen 2 version whereby the missiles orbited above the target site (or wherever desired) until the desired number of missiles where airborne (e.g., on-site), after which all then deployed on the target. I was shocked to hear this! A great idea if true. An aerial autonomous and targeted cluster bomb, of sorts.
“Or we could just trust Tillerson and our intel community. Certainly they wouldn’t lie to us.”
And we are quite sure they are way too smart to be fooled ...
If Trump limits it to this strike then I have no problem with it. However, like you I fear that it may work itself into something larger, and that would be a mistake.
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