Thread: At least 100 dead in suspected chemical attack

Originally Posted by Judy

If it happened, Assad didn't do this. These "chemical attack" stories look false to me. I think they're fake news stories created by the Anti-Assad forces in Syria.

TRUMP POINTS FINGER AT ASSAD blames Damascus for ‘heinous’ gas attack

Wed Apr 5, 2017 | 4:27pm EDT

U.S. dismisses Russian assertion rebels to blame for Syria gas attack

By Michelle Nichols and Tom Perry | UNITED NATIONS/BEIRUT

U.S. officials rejected Russia's assertion on Wednesday that Syrian rebels were to blame for a poison gas attack rather than President Bashar al-Assad, and signaled possible unilateral action over what Donald Trump called an "affront to humanity".

The U.S. president said the attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, "crossed a lot of lines", an allusion to his predecessor Barack Obama's threat to topple Assad with air strikes if he used such weapons.

It was not clear what, if any, action Trump would take.

The comments, which came just a few days after Washington said it was no longer focused on making Assad leave power, widened a rift between the Kremlin and Trump's White House after initial signals of warmer ties.

Western countries, including the United States, blamed Assad's armed forces for the worst chemical attack in Syria for more than four years.

U.S. intelligence officials, based on a preliminary assessment, said the deaths were most likely caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft on the town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday. A senior state department official said Washington had not yet ascertained it was sarin.

Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

A senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russian explanation was not credible. "We don't believe it," the official said.

COUNTER-RESOLUTION
The United States, Britain and France have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would condemn the attack; the Russian Foreign Ministry called it "unacceptable" and said it was based on "fake information".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would press its case blaming the rebels and deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov said Russia would veto the draft if Western nations went to a vote without further consultations, Interfax news agency reported.

Moscow has proposed its own draft, TASS news agency quoted a spokesman of Russia's U.N. mission, Fyodor Strzhizhovsky, as saying on Wednesday.


A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, issued what appeared to be a threat of unilateral action if Security Council members could not agree.

"When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," she told the council, without elaborating.

Trump described the attack as "horrible" and "unspeakable". Asked whether he was formulating a new policy toward Syria, he told reporters: "You'll see."

Video uploaded to social media showed civilians sprawled on the ground, some in convulsions, others lifeless. Rescue workers hose down the limp bodies of small children, trying to wash away chemicals. People wail and pound on the chests of victims.

The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said one of its hospitals in Syria had treated patients "with symptoms - dilated pupils, muscle spasms, involuntary defecation - consistent with exposure to neuro-toxic agents such as sarin". The World Health Organization also said the symptoms were consistent with exposure to a nerve agent.

"We're talking about war crimes," French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told reporters in New York.

Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, called the Russian statement blaming the rebels a "lie" and said rebels did not have the capability to produce nerve gas.

"Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas," he told Reuters from northwestern Syria.

"Likewise, all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture (of weapons)."

The incident is the first time U.S. intelligence officials have accused Assad of using sarin since 2013, when hundreds of people died in an attack on a Damascus suburb. At that time, Washington said Assad had crossed a "red line" set by then-President Obama.

Obama threatened an air campaign to topple Assad but called it off at the last minute when the Syrian leader agreed to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Moscow, a decision which Trump has long said proved Obama's weakness.

SAME DILEMMA
The new incident means Trump is faced with same dilemma that faced his predecessor: whether to openly challenge Moscow and risk deep involvement in a Middle East war by seeking to punish Assad for using banned weapons, or compromise and accept the Syrian leader remaining in power at the risk of looking weak.

RELATED COVERAGE

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• VIDEOMattis calls Syria chemical attack a "heinous act"
• Trump says chemical attack in Syria went 'beyond a red line'
• Russia offers set of 'false facts' on Syria chemical attacks: senior U.S. official
• Erdogan says more than 100 people killed in suspected Idlib chemical attack

Trump has described Tuesday's incident as "heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime" and faulted Obama for having failed to enforce the red line four years ago. Obama's spokesman declined to comment.

The Western-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution condemns the attack and presses Syria to cooperate with international investigators. Russia has blocked seven resolutions to protect Assad's government, most recently in February.

France's foreign minister said the chemical attack showed Assad was testing whether the new U.S. administration would stand by Obama-era demands that he be removed from power.

"It's a test. That's why France repeats the messages, notably to the Americans, to clarify their position," Jean-Marc Ayrault told RTL radio. "I told them that we need clarity. What's your position?"

Trump's response to a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow will be closely watched at home because of accusations by his political opponents that he is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election last year through computer hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The FBI and two congressional committees are investigating whether figures from the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.

Trump's relationship with Russia has deteriorated since the presidential election campaign, when Trump praised Putin as a strong leader and vowed to improve relations between the two countries, including a more coordinated effort to defeat Islamic State in Syria.

But as Russia has grown more assertive, including interfering in European politics and deploying missiles in its western Kaliningrad region and a new ground-launched cruise missile near Volgograd in southern Russia - an apparent violation of the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty - relations have cooled, U.S. officials have said.

The chemical attack in Idlib province, one of the last major strongholds of rebels, who have fought since 2011 to topple Assad, complicates diplomatic efforts to end a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of Syrians from their homes.

Over the past several months, Western countries, including the United States, had been quietly dropping their demands that Assad leave power in any deal to end the war, accepting that the rebels no longer had the capability to topple him by force.

The use of banned chemical weapons would make it harder for the international community to sign off on any peace deal that does not remove him. Britain and France on Wednesday renewed their call for Assad to leave power.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mi...-idUSKBN1770YU

"Gassed" - John Singer Sargent - 20t long Mustard gas used in our one year participation in WW1 - mexico was in communications with germany our enemy.


https://www.pafa.org/exhibitions/wor...d-american-art

Well, I'd say it is looking pretty indisputable that Assad's regime was responsible for using poison gas against his own citizens. Therefore, there was no actual chemical plant or stash of ISIS owned chemical poisons that were inadvertently exploded by the Assad air strike.

Nobody in there right mind would still defend Assad after all the information that was reported by broadcast and printed news media today.

There has been no information. Just fake photographs and propaganda by those who want to take down Assad and put in a Muslim ISIS-backed crazy.

There's been a bigger pot-hole on the drive into Walmart in my town than the one shown in that picture of where a bomb supposedly struck for over 2 years.

Trump, and other people in touch with reality, seem sure of who did what.


Trump condemns Syria chemical attack and suggests he will act
Trump: 'My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much'
Play Video3:3
President Trump discussed Syria and the Islamic State during a joint news conference with King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House on April 5. Here are key moments from that event. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

By Anne Gearan April 5 at 7:26 PM

President Trump confronted the enormity of the six-year-old Syrian conflict on Wednesday, acknowledging that he now bears responsibility for a war his predecessor could not end, but offering no specifics on what he could do differently.

Clearly emotional, Trump said a chemical attack in Syria that killed scores of civilians, including children, “crossed a lot of lines for me.”

“When you kill innocent children, innocent babies — babies! — little babies,” Trump said, “that crosses many, many lines. Beyond a red line, many, many lines.”

Trump said the multifaceted conflict “is now my responsibility,” and he appeared to reckon with the same lack of good options in Syria that repeatedly confounded former president Barack Obama.

Like Obama, Trump faces a Syrian strongman willing to commit atrocities and whose military and diplomatic backing from Russia has prolonged a civil war with numerous belligerents, separate from the campaign to defeat the Islamic State.

Suspected chemical attack kills scores of men, women and children in Syria


Play Video1:19
Doctors and activists in rebel-held areas have blamed the Syrian government for a sharp increase in chemical attacks since the end of last year. (The Washington Post)

Trump suggested that the attack Tuesday had changed his mind about his approach to Syria, which had seemed to focus exclusively on defeating the Islamic State, but he did not say what that might mean.

“I like to think of myself as a very flexible person,” Trump said in a Rose Garden news conference with visiting Jordanian King Abdullah II.

“And I will tell you that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me, big impact. That was a horrible, horrible thing,” Trump said. “I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.”

The president would not say whether military action against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is more likely as a result of the attack, and he did not address whether his concern on behalf of the dead and injured civilians had changed his mind about the wisdom of accepting Syrian refugees into the United States.

But he did say his “attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.”

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley suggested the United States could intervene militarily, although she, too, was not specific about what that might entail.

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” Haley said. “For the sake of the victims, I hope the rest of the council is finally willing to do the same.”


The scene in Syria after a chemical attack kills dozens


View Photos
At least 72 are reported dead after a chemical attack on a town in northern Syria.


If proven to have been carried out by Assad, the chemical attack Tuesday would represent a challenge to Trump to act where Obama did not. The attack followed recent Trump administration statements backing away from Obama’s insistence that Assad must leave power as a part of any political settlement in Syria.

Trump did not call for Assad to go and said nothing about Russian culpability for backing the regime and defending it against charges that it targeted civilians. The Assad government and Russia blamed the chemical release on rebel forces.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said that at least 72 people were killed, making it the deadliest chemical assault since 2013, when the Syrian government dropped sarin on the Damascus suburbs, killing hundreds of people as they slept, and bringing the United States and European allies to the verge of military intervention.

On Wednesday, Trump repeated campaign-trail criticism of the Obama administration for threatening military action over that 2013 attack and then backing off. For the balance of his presidency, Obama struggled with the limits of an arm’s-length approach that he maintained was still preferable to direct military involvement.

“We have a big problem. We have somebody that is not doing the right thing. And that’s going to be my responsibility,” Trump said. “But I’ll tell you, that responsibility could’ve made, been made, a lot easier if it was handled years ago.”

Trump had supported Obama’s decision not to bomb in 2013, but as a candidate, he used the episode as an example of what he called the Democrat’s weakness and indecision. Trump promised certitude and strength, and there were echoes of that rhetoric in his first Rose Garden news conference Wednesday.

“We will destroy ISIS and we will protect civilization,” Trump said, referring to the Islamic State group that operates in Syria and Iraq and is one of many players in the fractured country. “We have no choice. We will protect civilization.”

Abdullah, whose small country has been overwhelmed by Syrian refugees, largely dodged a question about whether Trump’s proposed travel ban, which would block Syrians from coming to the United States as refugees, would add to Jordan’s burden.

“The Europeans are being very forward-leaning” in providing financial and other help, Abdullah said. “A tremendous burden on our country, but again, tremendous appreciation to the United States and the Western countries for being able to help us in dealing with that.”

In the past, attacks on civilians such as the one Tuesday have increased the pressure on Syrians to flee.

Earlier Wednesday, Haley assailed Russia in blunt terms for protecting the Syrian government, saying that Moscow is callously ignoring civilian deaths.

“How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she said in New York, with representatives of the Syrian government and its Russian backers looking on.

She held aloft gruesome *images from the attack in Idlib province. One showed a child splayed and apparently lifeless.

“Russia has shielded Assad from U.N. sanctions. If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims to have, we need to see them use it,” Haley said. “We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts.”

[Deadly attack in Syria likely involved banned nerve agent, experts say]

At the United Nations, Russia’s representative lamented what he called “clearly an ideological thrust” to the discussion at the Security Council.

Accusations of the Assad regime’s involvement are “closely interwoven with the anti-Damascus campaign, which hasn’t yet reached the place it deserves on the landfill of history,” Russian representative Sergey Kononuchenko said.

Russia is likely to block a proposed Security Council condemnation of the attack.

Syria’s representative, Mounzer Mounzer, dismissed the accusation that his country is to blame, saying Damascus condemns the use of chemical weapons. “We don’t have them. We never use them,” he told the council.

Under Russian pressure, Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons and claimed it had eliminated its stockpiles.

Russia tried Wednesday to shift the blame to armed groups opposing Assad.

Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a Russian military spokesman, said Syrian warplanes had been targeting rebel workshops and depots.

“The territory of this storage facility housed workshops to produce projectiles filled with toxic agents,” he said in a recorded statement.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that victims’ symptoms bore all the hallmarks of a chemical attack, possibly involving a banned nerve agent. Syrian forces also have used *chlorine-based weapons.

The U.N. ambassadors to Britain and France criticized Russia directly for protecting the Assad government at the expense of civilians.

“History will judge all of us in how we respond to these unforgettable and unforgivable images of the innocent,” British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said. “How long are we going to sit here and pretend that actions in these chambers have no consequences?”

He said Russia and China squandered an opportunity to call out Syria when they vetoed a February effort to condemn smaller reported incidences of chemical weapons use.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...7b2_story.html

Assad didn't do this. It's just like the rebel propaganda they used in Arab Spring in Egypt and Libya. When will you ever learn? I guess never. That's why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

Originally Posted by Judy

Assad didn't do this. It's just like the rebel propaganda they used in Arab Spring in Egypt and Libya. When will you ever learn? I guess never. That's why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

Well, I'd say you're about the only person in the free world that believes Assad isn't responsible. How is it that you have access to better intelligence than Trump and the other world leaders that are blaming Assad??? Are you also in denial that Assad has exposed his people to chemical warfare in the past?

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

TRUMP POINTS FINGER AT ASSAD blames Damascus for ‘heinous’ gas attack

He's wrong on this one. Or has a game plan he doesn't otherwise want to discuss.

Trump may retaliate


BREAKING NEWS
President may use military action to punish Syria for this week's chemical attack