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MOSCOW — If Russia once maintained at least a semblance of distance from President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, it rushed to his defense after the American missile strike ordered by President Trump on Thursday. The attack cemented Moscow more closely than ever to the notorious Syrian autocrat.
Even as the United States condemned Mr. Assad for gassing his own citizens and held Russia partly responsible, given its 2013 promise to rid Syria of chemical weapons, the Kremlin kept denying that Syria had any such capability.
By championing Mr. Assad and condemning American "aggression," President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia seemed to be burying the idea that he could somehow cooperate with the Trump administration to end the conflict on his terms.
"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." Attributed to Abraham Maslow.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Monday April 10 2017, @04:01PM (2 children)
The problem is the minor fact that the two sarin precursors are usually kept separate, and mixed at the last moment, which makes dispersal by accidental bombing pretty difficult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 11 2017, @08:16AM (1 child)
Imagine that they are improperly stored, containers with one component stacked in the same room as containers with the other components. A bomb hits at breaks open the containers.
What would happen when the components mix?
Apart from that, allow me to quote your own post: "Usually". Meaning when stored by a well-trained army. Which they were not in this case, so the second explanation is that the incompetents simply didn't know or care to store them correctly.
Either way, I don't believe a word of what the US government says about who has which weapons for as long as I remember the Iraq WMD lie.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:59PM
Imagine that they are improperly stored, containers with one component stacked in the same room as containers with the other components. A bomb hits at breaks open the containers.
What would happen when the components mix?
You still have the problem of getting them into the air. But that's a reasonable explanation which would explain why there have been these intermittent chemical weapons attacks/releases for the past five or so years.