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posted by martyb on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:54AM   Printer-friendly

The Syrian government has once again been accused of attacking a rebel-held area with chemical weapons:

A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed scores of people, including children, in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitoring group, medics and rescue workers in the rebel-held area said.

The Syrian military denied responsibility and said it would never use chemical weapons.

The head of the health authority in rebel-held Idlib said more than 50 people had been killed and 300 wounded. The Union of Medical Care Organizations, a coalition of international aid agencies that funds hospitals in Syria, said at least 100 people had died.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack killed at least 58 people and was believed to have been carried out by Syrian government jets. It caused many people to choke, and some to foam at the mouth.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer blamed the attack on the "weakness and irresolution" of the previous U.S. administration.

Also at BBC, NYT, Fox News, the Washington Post, and The Hill.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:38AM (10 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:38AM (#489073) Homepage Journal

    When all sides are known to tell blatant lies, when all sides are more than willing to terrorize civilians, when all sides are perfectly capable of imagining a "false flag" operation - who do you believe?

    The Russians are perfectly capable of dropping a chemical weapon. So are the Syrians. The Americans love dropping all sort of ordnance via drone. We needn't even ask about ISIS or the rebels, since they regularly use and abuse civilians for their goals.

    Whichever story wins in the MSM, one thing is certain: no one should believe it.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:49PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:49PM (#489164) Journal
    Sounds like it's time to look at actual evidence then.
    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:37PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:37PM (#489234) Homepage Journal

      Actual evidence? Given the chaos, good luck with that.

      I don't put it past any of the parties to run a "false flag" operation, which would include making the evidence point conveniently to someone else.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 1) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday April 06 2017, @07:56PM (#489831) Journal

      Sounds like it's time to look at actual evidence then.

      What, exactly, do you expect that to prove? Are you expecting to find a bomb fragment stamped, "Assad dropped this!?"

      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:49PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 06 2017, @10:49PM (#489906) Journal

        What, exactly, do you expect that to prove? Are you expecting to find a bomb fragment stamped, "Assad dropped this!?"

        That would be evidence. But I don't have expectations on what the evidence looks like. Here, several victims have been autopsied [cnn.com] by Turkey and is alleged to have symptoms of nerve gas poisoning. In addition, the attack is alleged to have been done by airplane which if true, severely limits who could carry it out.

        We aren't completely helpless here.

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:32PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @04:32PM (#489206) Journal

    Only one of those groups has actually done it, recently.

    Maybe you should start there...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:52PM (#489281)

      exactly! [almasdarnews.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:13AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:13AM (#489424)

      Why would he?
      brad's nihilism is the narrative of fascism and he prefers it that way.
      When everybody is equally terrible there is no point in having standards.

  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:00PM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @11:00PM (#489400)

    "In war, truth is always the first casualty." - Aeschylus

    And this is no different. Including the nonsense of Obama being "weak": That guy launched more drone strikes than anybody ever had before.

    The problem the Obama administration had in Syria is that Hillary Clinton decided it was a good idea to arm the rebellion against Assad without sufficiently understanding (a) whether the people actually supported said rebellion, (b) whether the people they were arming were reasonably the good guys, or (c) what the unintended consequences of destabilizing a nation might be (in this case, allowing Daesh to thrive). In other words, trying to be too tough and too violent.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @05:51AM (#489522)

      You have that completely backwards.
      The arming of Syrian revolutionaries by the west wasn't even close to sufficient to make a difference. The dangling of possible support was.
      That's why the revolutionaries were constantly begging for support that never came.
      Eventually that lack of support drove them into the arms of ISIS who were glad to support them for their own ends. The revolutionaries were desperate and so any port in a storm. The price for cooperating with ISIS was (a) changing the conflict from a broad-based secular revolt into a sectarian sunni vs alawite fight and (b) loss of public support by all the people who abhor ISIS not the least of which were normal sunnis.

      The question of whether arming the revolutionaries would have been sufficient for them to prevail must go unanswered. But claiming clinton caused the problem by arming them is just cherry-picking ignorance fueled by bias.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:01PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 06 2017, @11:01PM (#489912) Journal

      And this is no different. Including the nonsense of Obama being "weak": That guy launched more drone strikes than anybody ever had before.

      Why do you think that launching drone attacks make someone strong?