Posted on 09/08/2013 5:57:09 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Syrian government forces may have carried out a chemical weapons attack close to Damascus without the personal permission of President Bashar al-Assad, Germany's Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday, citing German intelligence.
Syrian brigade and division commanders had been asking the Presidential Palace to allow them to use chemical weapons for the last four-and-a-half months, according to radio messages intercepted by German spies, but permission had always been denied, the paper said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
If true, why didn’t Assad immediately come out afterward and say this? He could have given the, ‘whoever did this against my orders is going to be held responsible’ speech.
But he didn’t. And still hasn’t.
Sounds like baloney
Everything Syria is baloney....
Doesn’t matter who did what to whom.
It’s still not our fight.
all beef baloney
I find this dubious since taking any personal initiative without orders would be a death sentence for those officers
and their executions would have already occurred
Exactly. Let them fight it out and see who is left. Then make a decision on what to do to whom.
The Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes on Syria, former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports say, in a manner that goes far beyond what critics charged the Bush administration of doing in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.
According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel’s famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.
Some possible truth there....one high general officer defected this past week.
I could not care less who did what over there. Assad sent gas? His military did it without permission? The rebels did it?
I favor the only rational American policy: send both sides more gas.
The idea was to get a top General, like A-Sisi in Egypt to stage a coup AFTER a nasty Chem. attack and with American attacks and support, take over Syria. Might be credible. Anything is possible in that part of the world right now.
Hey President Obama! How’s that 2009 Cairo Islamic Outreach speech working for ya? eh?
The Syrian Army's command, communications, and control is modeled on the old Soviet Red Army. In Soviet days, the Red Army had two chains of command: 1) the military and 2) political. The Zampolit (political officer) reported directly to the NKVD/KGB. Every officer lived in fear of being denounced, arrested, and shot on the word of the political officer. Many capable Russian officers were shot on a bad report by the political officer. Sometimes the political officer had a very bad and fatal accident before the report could be filed.
Obama wants the Syrians to suffer just like the Americans for using too much gas.
As long as Muslims are killing other Muslims, I’m Okay to finish my popcorn and visit the rest room. When they get done, I say make what’s left of them glow.
The little red line...
Yeah, but WHEN were the messages going on? If only in the last few weeks they are chattering - KNOWING that they are being intercepted - then this may be a set up to make it appear that Assad didn't directly order the strike. But either way, he IS responsible for what his military does so the international community - not just the U.S. - needs to respond.
I don't think dropping some cruise missiles will make much of an impact now since we already know they have moved military assets OUT of bases and into civilian areas just because they know we won't bomb them there. With all the brilliant people working for Obama, can't anyone come up with a better idea than this??? There HAS to be a better way to hurt Assad and his loyal henchmen and to discourage them from EVER doing it again. There are other ways to get the message to them. It may mean getting their ally Russia to disown them by the world leaning hard on Putin first. What good is the United Nations if not for just this kind of thing???
Obama needs to admit he overstepped and engaged his mouth sooner than his brain. He needs to admit that he was wrong to puff up his chest and DARE Assad to use WMD's. He's a MUSLIM! Doesn't Obama supposedly know how to think like one?
In your eagerness to punish Assad, you have revealed the primary reason why we shouldn't: The wrong guy is in charge.
We can't trust the Obama administration to mount a coherent strategy against a meaningful or realistic objective. Nor can you trust them to manage the consequences of whatever action they might take.
If you're leader is a vacillating narcissistic amateur, you don't go to war.
A competent C-I-C would have already had an effective operational plan in hand before he said anything about "red lines". The military staff lives to do Contingency Plans, so why wasn't there one in place that could have been activated within 24 hours after the chemical attack was confirmed?
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