Thread: Syria poison gas attack kills at least 40, activists and medics say

Originally Posted by Judy

All leaders of a country fighting a vicious civil war against rebels are "tyrants". It's how you win the damn war and save the country.

Bashar Assad has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents, including many women and children! The means doesn't always justify the means. Chemical warfare is deemed unacceptable for a reason. The fact that you would support the indiscriminate killing of so many innocents is puzzling to me.

President Bashar al-Assad's goal is not to save Syria but to preserve his rule. Of course everyone already knows that.

Trump Vows ‘Big Price’ for Syria Attack, Raising Prospect of Missile Strike

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISAPRIL 8, 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday promised a “big price” to be paid for what he said was a chemical weapons attack that choked dozens of Syrians to death the day before, and a top White House official said the administration would not rule out a missile strike to retaliate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

President Trump laid the blame for a deadly attack in Syria partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times

In a tweet, Mr. Trump laid the blame for the attack partly on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the first time since his election that he has criticized the Russian leader by name on Twitter. Mr. Putin’s forces have been fighting for years to keep the Assad government in power amid Syria’s brutal civil war.

Mr. Trump also left no doubt that he believed the assessment of aid groups that Mr. Assad’s military had used chemical weapons to inflict the carnage on Saturday in Douma, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. The attack left at least 42 people dead in their homes from apparent suffocation and sent many others to clinics with burning eyes and breathing problems.

“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria,” Mr. Trump wrote. “President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad.”

“Big price to pay,” Mr. Trump continued in a second tweet. “Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!”

Thomas P. Bossert, Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, said he and the rest of the president’s national security team had been in talks with Mr. Trump late Saturday and early Sunday about how to respond. Asked specifically about the possibility of a missile strike, Mr. Bossert did not rule it out.

“I wouldn’t take anything off the table,” Mr. Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week.” “These are horrible photos; we’re looking into the attack at this point.”

That raised the prospect of a strike along the lines of one that the president ordered almost exactly a year ago after a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed more than 80 civilians. In that strike, the United States military dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Al Shayrat airfield, where the chemical weapons attack had originated.

Mr. Trump may be considering such a strike even as he has expressed his desire in recent days to pull American troops out of Syria, where they are seeking to eliminate the last vestiges of the Islamic State. White House officials said Mr. Trump would have a meeting and dinner on Monday at the White House with senior military leaders.

Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, announced an emergency meeting there on Monday to demand immediate access to Douma for emergency workers, urge an independent investigation of the massacre, and “hold accountable those responsible for this atrocious act.”

The assault on Douma and the president’s response also showed how Syria has bedeviled Mr. Trump just as it did his predecessor, repeatedly presenting them with grave challenges and few good options for confronting them.

It was not clear on Sunday whether his tweets reflected serious planning for a military strike, or if the suspected chemical attack had changed the president’s calculation about the necessity for a rapid wind-down of American military involvement in Syria. A White House official said he could provide no guidance beyond what the president had said on Twitter.

But some Republicans urged Mr. Trump to act, saying his talk of pulling United States troops out of Syria had telegraphed to Mr. Assad that he would pay no price for brutalizing his own people.
“President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Assad had been “emboldened by American inaction” to launch the attack in Douma.

“The president responded decisively when Assad used chemical weapons last year,” Mr. McCain went on. “He should do so again, and demonstrate that Assad will pay a price for his war crimes.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Mr. Trump should make good on what the president appeared to be threatening.

If the president “doesn’t follow through and live up to that tweet, he’s going to look weak in the eyes of Russia and Iran,” Mr. Graham said on “This Week.” “This is a defining moment.”

“You need to follow through with that tweet,” he added. “Show a resolve that Obama never did to get this right.”

In his tweets, Mr. Trump also criticized former President Barack Obama for failing to take military action against Mr. Assad’s government when it used chemical weapons in 2013. Mr. Obama had threatened that any use of unconventional weapons would cross a “red line” for the United States.

At the time, though, Mr. Trump argued fiercely against American intervention in Syria. In more than a dozen messages on Twitter in 2013 and 2014, he argued that the nation’s civil war was “not our problem” and that American troops should “stay out.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump’s tweets came not long after a report on Fox News about the massacre in Douma, in which an anchor said that “all eyes” would now be on the president’s response, and that the airstrikes last year had “garnered praise” from American allies.

The timing of the tweets alarmed some progressives who warned that Mr. Trump might make military decisions based on commentary on his favorite cable news outlet.

“If Trump should launch missiles, it is because Fox and Friends told him to,” VoteVets, a group that focuses on military issues and is aligned with Democrats, said on Twitter. “We cannot possibly overstate how insane and disastrous for command of our military that would be.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/08/u...pgtype=article

9:53pm 4/8/18
Strikes hit Syrian airfield, state media report

A military airport in Syria has come under missile attack, the country's state media has reported.
Its air defence system was activated, the reports said.
Syrian TV said loud explosions had been heard near the T4 airfield in the city of Homs in the early hours of Monday.
Details are still emerging and the reports have not been independently verified.
But a senior US official has said there is no truth to reports that the US carried out strikes against government bases in Syria, Reuters news agency said.



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43694588

It's a civilian war, MW. Who do you think we killed when we dropped our bombs on Japan? And we'd do it again in a heartbeat somewhere else if we felt it was necessary to win and end a war. Do you know how many civilians died in WWII? Over 50 million. So, don't play that "innocent civilian" story with me. Who do you think Germany was killing with those bombs they dropped on London every single day for 6 years? Civilians die in wars, that's why it's best not to start them to begin with, and if you start one or respond to one, you better win it as quickly as possible and get it over with. And when you've lost one you started, the sooner you surrender, the better, if you care a whit about "innocent civilians". Syria didn't start this war, the rebels did.

How a secret Russian airlift helps Syria's Assad

Private Russian military contractors are being sent on clandestine flights to Syria, plane-tracking data shows. And a trail of documents reveals how aircraft from the West end up in the hands of those of U.S. blacklists.

By RINAT SAGDIEV, MARIA TSVETKOVA and OLENA VASINA
Filed April 6, 2018, 11 a.m. GMT

MOSCOW/KIEV – In a corner of the departures area at Rostov airport in southern Russia, a group of about 130 men, many of them carrying overstuffed military-style rucksacks, lined up at four check-in desks beneath screens that showed no flight number or destination.
When a Reuters reporter asked the men about their destination, one said: "We signed a piece of paper – we're not allowed to say anything. Any minute the boss will come and we'll get into trouble.

“You too," he warned.
The chartered Airbus A320 waiting on the tarmac for them had just flown in from the Syrian capital, Damascus, disgorging about 30 men with tanned faces into the largely deserted arrivals area. Most were in camouflage gear and khaki desert boots. Some were toting bags from the Damascus airport duty-free.

The men were private Russian military contractors, the latest human cargo in a secretive airlift using civilian planes to ferry military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his six-year fight against rebels, a Reuters investigation of the logistical network behind Assad’s forces has uncovered.
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The Airbus they flew on was just one of dozens of aircraft that once belonged to mainstream European and U.S. aviation companies, then were passed through a web of intermediary companies and offshore firms to Middle Eastern airlines subject to U.S. sanctions – moves that Washington alleges are helping Syria bypass the sanctions.
The flights in and out of Rostov, which no organisation has previously documented, are operated by Cham Wings, a Syrian airline hit with U.S. sanctions in 2016 for allegedly transporting pro-Assad fighters to Syria and helping Syrian military intelligence transport weapons and equipment. The flights, which almost always land late at night, don’t appear in any airport or airline timetables, and fly in from either Damascus or Latakia, a Syrian city where Russia has a military base.

The operation lays bare the gaps in the U.S. sanctions, which are designed to starve Assad and his allies in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Hezbollah militia of the men and materiel they need to wage their military campaign.
It also provides a glimpse of the methods used to send private Russian military contractors to Syria – a deployment the Kremlin insists does not exist. Russian officials say Moscow’s presence is limited to air strikes, training of Syrian forces and small numbers of special forces troops.
Reuters reporters staked out the Rostov airport, logged the unusual flights using publicly available flight-tracking data, searched aircraft ownership registries and conducted dozens of interviews, including a meeting at a fashionable restaurant with a former Soviet marine major on a U.S. government blacklist.


NIGHT FLIGHTS: A Cham Wings aircraft on the runway at the Rostov airport. The Syrian airline was hit with U.S. sanctions in 2016. REUTERS/Stringer Asked about the flights and the activities of Russian private military contractors in Syria, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin referred Reuters to the Defence Ministry -- which didn’t reply to the questions. The Syrian government also didn’t reply to questions.
In response to detailed Reuters questions, Cham Wings said only that information on where it flies was available on its website.
The flights to Rostov aren’t mentioned on the site. But the journeys do appear in online flight-tracking databases. Reporters traced flights between the Rostov airport and Syria from Jan. 5, 2017, to March 11, 2018. In that time, Cham Wings aircraft made 51 round trips, each time using Airbus A320 jets that can carry up to 180 passengers.

The issue of military casualties is highly sensitive in Russia, where memories linger of operations in Chechnya and Afghanistan that dragged on for years. Friends and relatives of the contractors suspect Moscow is using the private fighters in Syria because that way it can put more boots on the ground without risking regular soldiers, whose deaths have to be accounted for.
Forty-four regular Russian service personnel have died in Syria since the start of the operation there in September 2015, Russian authorities have said. (This number does not include 39 Russian service personnel who died in a non-combat plane crash in Latakia on March 6.)
A Reuters tally based on accounts from families and friends of the dead and local officials suggests that at least 40 contractors were killed between January and August 2017 alone.

One contractor killed in Syria left Russia on a date that tallies with one of the mysterious nighttime flights out of Rostov, his widow said. The death certificate issued by the Russian consulate in Damascus gave his cause of death as “haemorrhagic shock from shrapnel and bullet wounds.”


RETURNING HOME: Unidentified men carrying camouflage rucksacks and Damascus airport duty-free bags arrive at the Rostov airport from Syria. REUTERS/Stringer

“We signed a piece of paper – we're not allowed to say anything. Any minute the boss will come and we'll get into trouble.”
Man waiting to board flight to Syria

TRYING TO CHOKE OFF ASSAD’S ACCESS TO AIRCRAFT
To sustain his military campaign against rebels, Assad and his allies in Russia, Iran and the Hezbollah militia need access to civilian aircraft to fly in men and supplies. Washington has tried to choke off access to the aircraft and their parts through export restrictions on Syria and Iran and through Treasury Department sanctions blacklisting airlines in those countries. The Treasury Department has also blacklisted several companies outside Syria, accusing them of acting as middlemen.
“These actions demonstrate our resolve to target anyone who is enabling Assad and his regime,” John E. Smith, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in testimony to a congressional committee in November.

In recent years, dozens of planes have been registered in Ukraine to two firms, Khors and Dart, that were founded by a former Soviet marine major and his onetime military comrades, according to the Ukraine national aircraft register. The planes were then sold or leased and ended up being operated by Iranian and Syrian airlines, according to the flight-tracking data.


MILITARY PAST: Sergei Tomchani, a former Soviet marine major, helped found the air industry firms Khors and Dart. Aircraft operated by those companies wound up in the hands of Syrian and Iranian operators subject to sanctions. Tomchani is pictured here in 2010. REUTERS/Stringer One of the companies, Khors, and the former marine major, Sergei Tomchani, have been on a U.S. Commerce Department blacklist since 2011 for allegedly exporting aircraft to Iran and Syria without obtaining licences from Washington.
But in the past seven years, Khors and Dart have managed to acquire or lease 84 second-hand Airbus and Boeing aircraft by passing the aircraft through layers of non-sanctioned entities, according to information collated by Reuters from national aircraft registers. Of these 84 aircraft, at least 40 have since been used in Iran, Syria and Iraq, according to data from three flight-tracking websites, which show the routes aircraft fly and give the call sign of the company operating them.
In September, the U.S. Treasury Department added Khors and Dart to its sanctions blacklist, saying they were helping sanctioned airlines procure U.S.-made aircraft. Khors and Dart, as well as Tomchani, have denied any wrongdoing related to supplying planes to sanctioned entities.


The ownership histories of some of the aircraft tracked by Reuters showed how the U.S. restrictions on supplies to Iranian and Syrian airlines may be skirted. As the ownership skips from one country to the next, the complex paper trail masks the identity of those involved in Syria’s procurement of the planes.
One of the Cham Wings Airbus A320 jets that has made the Rostov-Syria trip was, according to the Irish aircraft register, once owned by ILFC Ireland Limited, a subsidiary of Dublin-based AerCap, one of the world's biggest aircraft-leasing firms.

In January 2015, the aircraft was removed from the Irish register, said a spokesman for the Irish Aviation Authority, which administers the register. For the next two months, the aircraft, which carried the identification number EI-DXY, vanished from national registers before showing up on the aircraft register in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian register gave its new owner as Gresham Marketing Ltd, which is registered in the British Virgin Islands. The owners of the company are two Ukrainians, Viktor Romanika and Nikolai Saverchenko, according to corporate documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Ukrainian business records show they are managers in small local businesses. Contacted by phone, Romanika said he knew nothing and hung up. Saverchenko couldn’t be reached by phone and didn’t respond to a letter delivered to the address listed for him.

In March 2015, Gresham leased EI-DXY to Dart, according to the Ukrainian aircraft register. The identification number was changed to a Ukrainian number, UR-CNU. On Aug. 20, 2015, Khors became the aircraft's operator, the register showed.
A representative of the Ukraine State Aviation Service said the register was not intended as official confirmation of ownership but that there had been no complaints about the accuracy of its information.
From April that year, the aircraft was flown by Cham Wings, according to data from the flight-tracking websites.

Gillian Culhane, a spokeswoman for AerCap, the firm whose subsidiary owned the plane in 2015, didn’t respond to written questions or answer repeated phone calls seeking comment about what AerCap knew about the subsequent owners and operators of the plane. Dart and Khors didn’t respond to questions about the specific aircraft.
Four lawyers specialising in U.S. export rules say that transactions involving aircraft that end up in Iran or Syria carry significant risks for Western companies supplying the planes or equipment. Even if they had no direct dealings with a sanctioned entity, the companies supplying the aircraft can face penalties or restrictions imposed by the U.S. government, the lawyers said.

The lawyers, however, said that the legal exposure for aircraft makers such as Boeing and Airbus was minimal, because the trade involves second-hand aircraft that are generally more than 20 years old, and the planes had been through a long chain of owners before ending up with operators subject to sanctions.
Two of the lawyers, including Edward J. Krauland, who leads the international regulation and compliance group at law firm Steptoe & Johnson, said U.S. export rules apply explicitly to Boeing aircraft because they’re made in the United States. But they can also apply to Airbus jets because, in many cases, a substantial percentage of the components is of U.S. origin.

Boeing said in a statement: “The aircraft transactions described that are the subject of your inquiry did not involve The Boeing Company. Boeing maintains a robust overall trade control and sanctions compliance program.” An Airbus spokesman said, “Airbus fully respects all applicable legal requirements with regard to transactions with countries under U.N., EU, UK and U.S. sanctions.”
WAR-ZONE FLIGHTS
When Reuters sent a series of questions to Khors and Dart about their activities, Tomchani, the former marine major, called the reporter within minutes.


BROTHERS IN ARMS: Russian President Vladimir Putin has provided military power to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power. Above, the two men meet in Sochi, Russia, last November. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS He said he was no longer a shareholder in either firm but was acting as a consultant to them, and that the questions had been passed on to him. He invited the reporter to meet the following day at the high-end Velyur restaurant in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
In the 90-minute meeting, he denied providing aircraft to Iran or Syria. Instead, he said, Khors and Dart had provided aircraft to third parties, which he did not identify. Those third parties, he said, supplied the planes on to the end users.

“We did not supply aircraft to Iran,” Tomchani, a man of military bearing in his late 50s, said as he sipped herbal tea. “We have nothing to do with supplying aircraft to Cham Wings.”
Neither Dart nor Khors could have sold or leased aircraft to Cham Wings because they were not the owners of the aircraft, he said.
Tomchani used to serve in a marine unit of the Soviet armed forces in Vladivostok, on Russia's Pacific coast. In 1991, after quitting the military with the rank of major, he set up Khors along with two other officers in his unit. Tomchani and his partners made a living by flying Soviet-built aircraft, sold off cheap after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in war zones.


HOT SEAT: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visits a Russian air base at Hmeymim, in western Syria, in 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS Khors flew cargoes in Angola for the Angolan government and Defence Ministry and aid agencies during its civil war. Tomchani said his companies also operated flights in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, transporting private security contractors.
Ukraine's register of business ownership showed that Tomchani ceased to be a shareholder in Khors after June 2010 and that he gave up his interest in Dart at some point after April 2011. He told Reuters he sold his stakes to “major businessmen,” but declined to name them.

He did say, however, that the people listed at the time of the interview in Ukraine's business register as the owners of the two companies were merely proxies. One of the owners in the register was a mid-ranking Khors executive, one was an 81-year-old accountant for several Kiev firms, and another was someone with the same name and address as a librarian from Melitopol in southeast Ukraine.
According to the business register, the owner of 25 percent in Khors is someone called Vladimir Suchkov. The address listed for him in the register is No. 33, Elektrikov Street, Kiev. That’s the same address as the one listed in Ukrainian government procurement documents for military unit No. A0515, which comes under the command of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate.
https://queso.prod.reuters.tv/rest/v...id/RCV4SHQ/mp4

Tomchani said he and Suchkov were old acquaintances. “He wasn’t a bad specialist,” Tomchani said. “A young lad, but not bad.” He said he believed Suchkov was living in Russia.
Reuters was unable to contact Suchkov. A telephone number listed for him was out of service. The Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate's acting head, Alexei Bakumenko, told Reuters that Suchkov doesn’t work there.

Reuters found no evidence of any other link between the trade in aircraft and Ukraine’s broader spy apparatus. Ukrainian military intelligence said it has no knowledge of the supply of aircraft to Syria, has no connection to the transport of military contractors from Russia to Syria, and hasn’t cooperated with Khors, Dart or Cham Wings.
On Jan. 9 this year, Dart changed its name to Alanna, and listed a new address and founders, according to the Ukrainian business register. On March 1, a new company, Alanna Air, took over Alanna’s assets and liabilities, the register showed.

CONTRACTORS COME BACK IN CASKETS
Although Moscow denies it is sending private military contractors to Syria, plenty of people say that’s untrue. Among them are dozens of friends and former colleagues of the fighters and people associated with the firm that recruits the men – a shadowy organisation known as Wagner with no offices, not even a brass plaque on a door.


It was founded by Dmitry Utkin, a former military intelligence officer, according to people interviewed during this investigation. Its first combat role was in eastern Ukraine in support of Moscow-backed separatists, they said. Reuters was unable to contact Utkin directly. The League of Veterans of Local Conflicts, which according to Russian media has ties to Utkin, declined to pass on a message to him, saying it had no connection to the Wagner group.
Russia has 2,000 to 3,000 contractors fighting in Syria, said Yevgeny Shabayev, local leader of a paramilitary organisation in Russia who is in touch with some of the men. In a single battle in February this year, about 300 contractors were either killed or wounded, according to a military doctor and two other sources familiar with the matter.


A Russian private military contractor who has been on four missions to Syria said he arrived there on board a Cham Wings flight from Rostov. The flights were the main route for transporting the contractors, said the man, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Vladimir. He said the contractors occasionally use Russian military aircraft too, when they can’t all fit on the Cham Wings jets.
Two employees at Rostov airport talked to Reuters about the men on the mysterious flights to Syria.
“Our understanding is that these are contractors,” said an employee who said he assisted with boarding for several of the Syria flights. He pointed to their destination, the fact there were no women among them and that they carried military-style rucksacks. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media.


Reuters wasn’t able to establish how many passengers were carried between Russia and Syria, and it is possible that some of those on board were not in Syria in combat roles. Some may have landed in Damascus, then flown to other destinations outside Syria.
Interviews with relatives of contractors killed in Syria also indicate the A320 flights to Rostov are used to transport Russian military contractors. The widow of one contractor killed in Syria said the last time she spoke to her husband by phone was on Jan. 21 last year -- the same day, according to flight-tracking data, that a Cham Wings charter flew to Syria.
“He called on the evening of the 21st. … There were men talking and the sound of walkie-talkies. And by the 22nd he was already not reachable. Only text messages were reaching him,” said the woman, who had previously visited her husband at a training camp for the contractors in southern Russia.
After he was killed, she said, his body was delivered to Russia. She received a death certificate saying he had died of “haemorrhagic shock from shrapnel and bullet wounds.”
reuters investigates


The widows of two other contractors killed in Syria described how their husbands’ bodies arrived back home. Like the first widow, they spoke on condition of anonymity. They said representatives of the organisation that recruited their husbands warned of repercussions if they spoke to the media.
The two contractors had been on previous combat tours, their widows said. The women said they received death certificates giving Syria as the location of death. Reuters saw the certificates: On one, the cause of death was listed as “carbonisation of the body” – in other words, he burned to death. The other man bled to death from multiple shrapnel wounds, the certificate said.


One of the widows recounted conversations with her husband after he returned from his first tour of duty to Syria. He told her that Russian contractors there are often sent into the thick of the battle and are the first to enter captured towns, she said.
Syrian government forces then come into the town and raise their flags, he told her, taking credit for the victory.
(This story was updated to include the deaths of 39 Russian service personnel in a non-combat plane crash in Latakia on March 6.)

Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, Anton Zverev, Gleb Stolyarov and Denis Pinchuk in Moscow and Joel Schectman and Lesley Wroughton in Washington.





FRONT LINE: Images of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad are on display outside eastern Ghouta, Syria, in February 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

https://www.reuters.com/investigates...ussia-flights/

Originally Posted by Judy

It's a civilian war, MW. Who do you think we killed when we dropped our bombs on Japan? And we'd do it again in a heartbeat somewhere else if we felt it was necessary to win and end a war. Do you know how many civilians died in WWII? Over 50 million. So, don't play that "innocent civilian" story with me. Who do you think Germany was killing with those bombs they dropped on London every single day for 6 years? Civilians die in wars, that's why it's best not to start them to begin with, and if you start one or respond to one, you better win it as quickly as possible and get it over with. And when when you've lost one you started, the sooner you surrender, the better, if you care a whit about "innocent civilians". Syria didn't start this war, the rebels did.

Your attempt at trying to justify the actions of a murderous tyrant like President Bashar al-Assad and his partner Putin is lost on me. Of course you've been making your admiration for Putin well known for awhile now.

The United States, United Kingdom, France and other Western Countries have provided varying degrees of support for moderate rebel forces. Russian and Iran support Bashar al-Assad. Like I said, your support of Bashar al-Assad is very puzzling.

I've never once said anything about how I feel one way or another about Putin. I don't know the man and know very little about him.

I don't see the world in terms of tyrants, MW. One person's tyrant is someone else's champion. More than 2/3 of the Syrian population supports Assad, so who are you to tell them they're wrong? Assad is still in power because the vast majority of the Syrian people want him to be.

Originally Posted by Judy

I've never once said anything about how I feel one way or another about Putin. I don't know the man and know very little about him.

I don't see the world in terms of tyrants, MW. One person's tyrant is someone else's champion. More than 2/3 of the Syrian population supports Assad, so who are you to tell them they're wrong? Assad is still in power because the vast majority of the Syrian people want him to be.

Okay, how about producing the poll, with details, where those numbers came from. Not saying they aren't accurate but I'd certainly like to read the details. Link please. Do your numbers account for the over 4 million refugees that have fled Syria in the last five years? I think Syria's population is only around 18 or 19 million.

As for Putin, seems to me you've defended him and spoke of your admiration for Russia on numerous occasions.

Yes, I admire the Russians, but I've never said anything one way or another about Putin. Like I said, I don't know him and know very little about him. I admire the Russians because they were our ally during WWII, they suffered enormously in the war, more than any other country, and they refused recovery aid from the US after the war when every other country took it. The Russians don't steal our jobs, they don't flood US with illegal aliens, they don't steal our trade, they actually never do anything to harm US and have usually had our backs.

As to Syria, this is just common knowledge about the Syrian population that supports their government which is why we're the only fools supporting wack-o-doodle rebels trying to overthrow that government and destroying their own towns and communities trying to do. 2/3 of Syria has been unaffected by the war, the other 1/3 is a diverse group of factions that formed a weird coalition to try to overthrow Assad. A minority of the country trying to take over the country and John Kerry thought this made sense to get the US involved in such a catastrophe. Trump correctly wants no part of this and now that ISIS has been squashed there, with a few left to kill in that remote border area with Jordan, we'll be out of there, and the sooner the better.

Syria conflict: Russia says no evidence of Douma chemical attack

• 4/9/18 8:50am est

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said no evidence has been found of a chemical weapons attack in Syria's formerly rebel-held town of Doum.

He said Russian specialists and aid workers had visited the area. Rebel fighters have started leaving the town under a surrender deal.
Medical sources say dozens were killed in Saturday's alleged attack but numbers are impossible to verify.

The US and France threatened a "joint, strong response" to the alleged attack.
The United Nations Security Council is to discuss the allegations later on Monday.
The Russian denial came hours after a deadly attack on a Syrian military airport, which Moscow and the Syrian government blamed on Israel.

Missiles hit the Tiyas airbase, known as T4, near the city of Homs. Observers say 14 people were killed.

Israel, which has previously hit Syrian targets, has not commented. Syria initially blamed Washington for the strike, but the US, UK and France have all denied involvement.

It is unclear if the strike has anything to do with the suspected chemical attack.

What has been the reaction on Douma?

US President Donald Trump said there would be a "big price to pay" for the alleged attack in Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta region, near the capital Damascus. He branded Syria's President Bashar al-Assad an "animal".

The US leader and France's President Emmanuel Macron vowed to "co-ordinate a strong, joint response" after a telephone call on Sunday.

Mr Macron's office said he and Mr Trump had "exchanged information and analysis confirming the use of chemical weapons".
UK Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said Britain was working with its allies on the response.
Meanwhile Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, expressed "grave concern" about the alleged attack. The OPCW is currently gathering information about the possible use of chemical weapons.

What do the Russians say?

Mr Lavrov said that the Russian military had warned many times of a "provocation" being prepared, aimed at putting the blame on Damascus for the alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians.

"Our military specialists have visited this place, along with representatives of the Syrian Red Crescent... and they did not find any trace of chlorine or any other chemical substance used against civilians," he said.
Moscow favoured an "honest investigation" of such incidents, he said, but opposed apportioning blame without any proof.

What is happening in Douma?

Medical sources say dozens of people were killed on Saturday in Douma.
One video, recorded by rescue workers known as the White Helmets, shows a number of men, women and children lying lifeless inside a house, many with foam at their mouths.
However, it has not been possible to verify independently what actually happened, or the number of dead.
Syria and Russia have reached an evacuation deal with the Jaish al-Islam rebels, who up until now have been holding Douma.
Moscow said military operations there had been halted. Under the deal, 100 buses are said to be moving 8,000 fighters and 40,000 of their relatives out of the battered town. Hostages who had been held by the rebels are being set free.
The development means pro-government forces have now taken full control of the Eastern Ghouta.
Analysts say this is President Assad's biggest military success since the fall of Aleppo in 2016. It follows a weeks-long government offensive in which more than 1,600 people were killed.

What about the airfield attack?

Syrian state news agency Sana, quoting a military source, reported that air defences had repelled an Israeli missile attack on T4, saying the missiles were fired by Israeli F15 jets in Lebanese airspace.

• Iran building base in Syria - claim

It said there were casualties, without giving a number.
Russia's defence ministry said that, of eight missiles, five were shot down and three reached the western part of the aerodrome.
UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that fighters of various nationalities - meaning Iranians or members of Iranian-backed Shia militias - were among the 14 dead at the base.
Israel rarely acknowledges carrying out strikes, but has admitted attacking targets in Syria dozens of times since 2012. Its heaviest air strike on Syria, in February this year, included targeting the T4 air base.
That followed an incursion by an Iranian drone into Israel and the shooting down by Syrian air defences of an Israeli F16 fighter jet.

Israel has said it will not allow Iran, its arch-foe, to set up bases in Syria or operate from there, something Israel considers a major threat.
The Israeli military said Iran and its Revolutionary Guards had long been active in the T4 base, and were using it to transfer weapons, including to Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, an enemy of Israel.
They also said the drone had been launched from the base.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43697670