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Rebels are to blame for gas attacks? (Syria)

A short range chemical weapon and no one is wearing a gas mask, or protective clothing. Im not convinced.

yeah I mean it's not like jihadists care if they die or anything. They're careful people focused on their future. I wouldn't expect them to take any risks with dangerous weapons.
 
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What tacticle objective were the rebs trying to achieve by gassing civilians?

Good evening, apdst. :2wave:

Perhaps they have succeeded in what they were trying to do. They are creating a problem for Assad! Are they planning a regime change, which would get rid of the current ruling faction and replace it with something else? Who knows what that might be? I cite Egypt as an example. In the meantime, the Mideast is in chaos! Who does that benefit? :thumbdown:
 
What tacticle objective were the rebs trying to achieve by gassing civilians?

Did I post anything about the Rebels using chemicals? Nope. But, let's see what possibilities we can come up with....

1) Maybe the "rebels" used chemical weapons to try to get Fearless Leader to intervene on their behalf? Maybe they read The Hunger Games in which, you know, SPOILER
Katniss' sister Prim is killed by the rebels attacking their own people to arouse anger among their own
SPOILER

2) Maybe there were no chemical weapons and the excuse for this war is just as fake as the Iraq war excuse was?

3) Maybe Assad wants us to attack him so he used chemical weapons on innocent civilians for absolutely no tactical benefit?

What do you think?
 
Pssst: who passed the War Powers Act? Come on, you can google it.

Pssst: The War Powers Act has prevented what President from doing what military action? Come on, you can google it.
 
Pssst: The War Powers Act has prevented what President from doing what military action? Come on, you can google it.

Oh I forget: you're using conservative logic and so you don't want to discuss relevant facts.
 
It depends on what "evidence" one is looking at!


US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey stand accused of state sponsorship of terrorism. UN failure to enforce its own resolutions will resign their legitimacy, necessitate their expedient removal and replacement with multipolar system.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) currently arming, funding, and commanding entire brigades of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), is designated an Al Qaeda affiliate by the United Nations pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1989 (2011), in addition to being listed by both the US State Department and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf) as a foreign terrorist organization and a proscribed terrorist organization respectively.


UN Designates “Free Syrian Army” Affiliates as Al Qaeda | Global Research

There are no "groups" in Syria that are or will be an ally or friend of the US.

NONE.

What is currently happening is the Muslim version of our Vietnam or Korean War; in that the Sunni's (Saudi Arabia and others) and Shiites (Iran, Al Qaeda and others) are fighting a proxy war with Syria the battleground.
 
What tacticle objective were the rebs trying to achieve by gassing civilians?
They were hoping for it to be blamed on Assad as the US is trying to do, knowing that if it would work, they could lay on their laurels, take a break, while the US starts blowing stuff and people up. A lot of those people will be civilians too though.
 
Yes, even Fox News (so infamous for being anti-Obama admin) is reporting the "Syrian government propaganda", and I'm not convinced that the Syrian government is behind it.

Surely you know, FOX would love anybody if they can get behind another war.
 
There are no "groups" in Syria that are or will be an ally or friend of the US.

NONE.

What is currently happening is the Muslim version of our Vietnam or Korean War; in that the Sunni's (Saudi Arabia and others) and Shiites (Iran, Al Qaeda and others) are fighting a proxy war with Syria the battleground.

I don't know that I want to necessarily disagree with you on that Beau, it is however somewhat different than what you said that prompted me to post what your quoting. Even you have put the posters up of Uncle Sam drawing horns on an al Qaida fighter in A-Stan and angels wings on the same fighter in Syria. That is who the US is aligning themselves with in Syria, much as John McCain wants to insist on how moderate they are the UN has absolutely designated the FSA an al Qaida affiliate. Assad and Putin have both insisted that Assad is fighting a war on terrorists inside his borders, myself and others on this board have documented the horrible atrocities committed by these Islamist extremists jihadists and the US is backing the wrong people in this war and interfering in Assad's war on terror. But that's how the US rolls these days, all three branches of our government are broken, both houses of congress are impotent when it comes to dealing with the imperial presidency and Jimmy Carter is right, we do no longer have a functioning democracy.
 
I'm not saying that's what happened. But the Syrian government was winning the war and attacking only civilians only galvanized the world against them. That seems like an awfully boneheaded move. I wondered why the UN wasn't acting, it may be because this isn't as clear cut as Obama is making it out to be.
You know what would also be a really boneheaded move? A U.S. president helping to commit a war crime to justify aiding America's enemies, when most of the country is war-weary and half of the country is looking for him to fail.

I'm a little confused by why Assad would order a chemical weapons attack as well, but I have to believe that our leaders (1) are not insane, and (2) have learned enough from the Iraq debacle not to repeat the same mistakes of faulty intelligence.
 
You know what would also be a really boneheaded move? A U.S. president helping to commit a war crime to justify aiding America's enemies, when most of the country is war-weary and half of the country is looking for him to fail.

I'm a little confused by why Assad would order a chemical weapons attack as well, but I have to believe that our leaders (1) are not insane, and (2) have learned enough from the Iraq debacle not to repeat the same mistakes of faulty intelligence.

Wow, your a brave soul!
 
I'm not saying that's what happened. But the Syrian government was winning the war and attacking only civilians only galvanized the world against them. That seems like an awfully boneheaded move. I wondered why the UN wasn't acting, it may be because this isn't as clear cut as Obama is making it out to be.

Once again, someone going to a political porn site and asking us to indulge in his fantasies. Where are the serious people at DP?
 
upsideguy , serious people don't post on chat boreds [sic]
they are too busy making things happen in the real world
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/w...ried-large-payload-of-gas-experts-say.html?hp

A new study of images apparently from the Syrian attack last month concludes that the rockets delivering toxic sarin gas to neighborhoods around Damascus held up to 50 times more nerve agent than previously estimated, a conclusion that could solve the mystery of why there were so many more victims than in previous chemical attacks.
The study, by leading weapons experts, also strongly suggests that the mass of toxic material could have come only from a large stockpile. American, British and French officials have charged that only the Syrian government and not the rebels was in position to make such large quantities of deadly toxins.

Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress, in hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, that the United States believes the Syrian military was responsible for the attack, and in classified briefings officials have pointed to Unit 450, which controls Syrian chemical weapons.

The new study was conducted by Richard M. Lloyd, an expert in warhead design, and Theodore A. Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They based their investigation on scores of online videos and photographs posted since the Aug. 21 attack sent thousands of sick and dying Syrians to hospitals in the Damascus suburbs.

In interviews and reports, the two weapons specialists said their analysis of rocket parts and wreckage posted online suggested that the warheads carried toxic payloads of about 50 liters (13 gallons), not the one or two liters (up to half a gallon) of nerve agent that some weapons experts had previously estimated.

“It’s a clever design,” Dr. Postol said of the munitions in an interview. “It’s clever not only in how it was implemented but in the effectiveness of its dispersal. It accounts for the large number of causalities.”

Shortly after the attack, some analysts said they doubted if the identified rockets could have carried enough nerve agent to have caused the mass casualties. Mr. Lloyd and Dr. Postol say their analysis explains how the misidentification of a central rocket part resulted in the excessively small payload estimates.

In an interview, Mr. Lloyd said the manufacture of the rockets, if not the deadly nerve agent, appeared to be within the capabilities of both the Syrian government and the rebels.

But Stephen Johnson, a former British Army chemical warfare expert who is now a forensic expert at Cranfield University, at Shrivenham, said if the estimate of a 50-liter payload was correct, only the Syrian government could have achieved such a large volume of production.

“That’s a fairly substantial amount to produce yourself and beyond the opposition in its wildest dreams,” he said. Suggestions that the Syrian rebels seized or secretly obtained such amounts, Mr. Johnson added, lacked credibility. “It’s more supportive of the argument that it was the government,” he said.

The Obama administration has charged that the Syrian government fired rockets carrying warheads filled with sarin, a liquid nerve agent that vaporizes into a deadly mist that human skin can quickly absorb. The toxin throws nerves and muscles all over the body into overdrive, resulting in lung paralysis and death. The pupils of victims are often tiny because the iris, a muscle, contracts so much.

In their analysis, Mr. Lloyd and Dr. Postol said experts analyzing pictures of the rocket debris in Syria had misidentified thin tubes found sticking out of the ground as the payload canister. Instead, they say, the tubes made up an inner explosive device that, when the rocket slammed into the ground, caused a much larger container to burst open and disperse large volumes of gas.

Photographs of impaled rockets, the weapons experts say, often show the crumpled skin of the larger canister lying nearby.

“This design explains the evidence on the ground,” Dr. Postol said. The cloud from the impacting rocket, he added, probably rose to a height of 10 or 15 feet.

Dr. Postol is a professor and national security expert in M.I.T.’s Program in Science, Technology and Society. Mr. Lloyd, in two decades at Raytheon, a top military contractor, wrote two books on warhead design and now works for Tesla Laboratories, a military contractor in Arlington, Va.

Raymond A. Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a former United Nations weapons inspector, said the analysis of the two weapons experts seemed plausible. He said that deadly rockets that Iraq fired at Iran in the 1980 held nine liters of toxic chemicals, and that the Syrian rockets involved in the massacre looked like those but with an added secondary canister.

“I can’t say if it was 50 liters,” Dr. Zilinskas said, “but it would certainly add to the payload.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
 
They were hoping for it to be blamed on Assad as the US is trying to do, knowing that if it would work, they could lay on their laurels, take a break, while the US starts blowing stuff and people up. A lot of those people will be civilians too though.

Now, you're speculating, big time.
 
yeah I mean it's not like jihadists care if they die or anything. They're careful people focused on their future. I wouldn't expect them to take any risks with dangerous weapons.

They have enough sense to know that "no one ever won a war by dieing for his country. He won it by making that other poor dumb bastard die for his country". They know they can't win by squandering their limited resources.
 
Good evening, apdst. :2wave:

Perhaps they have succeeded in what they were trying to do. They are creating a problem for Assad! Are they planning a regime change, which would get rid of the current ruling faction and replace it with something else? Who knows what that might be? I cite Egypt as an example. In the meantime, the Mideast is in chaos! Who does that benefit? :thumbdown:

The civilians that didn't die would be raising holy hell by now. Turning on the rebs.
 
...Islam is going to destroy the west? oh plueaze dude seriously? I'd much rather the west would just concentrate on doing what we do best, getting richer and elevating our citizens standards of living.

The probability that even if we tried our best that we could drag these people into the 21st century is 0.000000000000000000%

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The thing is Russia supports and thereby contains them in the 14th century. They are best at exploiting such people with primitive means (i.e., against human rights).
 
Syrian Rebels Claim Saudi Prince Bandar Responsible For Chemical Weapons Attack

Next week they will claim it was Santa or some alien from Area 51. Obama has eyes on the ground, as well as satellites and U-2 flyover data. At some point we have to let the guy that sixty-five million voted for just do his job.
 
getting the Americans to blow The Smithereens out of their opposition like we did in Kosovo and Libya?

So logically it could not have been those associated with Al Qaeda. It would be ideologically inconsistent for them to invite infidels to fight on Muslim soil.

Osama Bin Laden hated Saddam, but he hated the idea of western troops on Saudi soil more.
 
The civilians that didn't die would be raising holy hell by now. Turning on the rebs.

OMG. And how are civilians going to turn on Islamist extremist jihadist that have been chopping civilians heads off, that are heavily armed and that all accounts, NATO included, say the civilian population fears and hates. But I know your eager for war not justice.
 
Next week they will claim it was Santa or some alien from Area 51. Obama has eyes on the ground, as well as satellites and U-2 flyover data. At some point we have to let the guy that sixty-five million voted for just do his job.

Russia has the same capabilities with different results so NO! I realise how desperate you are for another war, another theatre, but NO!
 
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