You were saying?
Posted on 04/10/2017 6:33:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
U.S. officials say they are reaching the consensus view that Assad was simply acting out of desperation. The embattled Syrian leader is facing a major rebel offensive in Idlib province, led by radical Islamic groups, that his depleted and exhausted army is ill-equipped to counter by conventional means. Chemical weapons were a response of cold-blooded convenience, they believe.
That Trump and his team couldn't initially decide what may have motivated the strike complicated the decision-making on how to move forward, one administration official said, but "not to the point of stopping us from doing anything.”
...Aides and friends say the lack of clarity seemed to worry Trump, who is impatient and has sometimes expressed distrust of the intelligence community, while he faced his first military test.
"No one really knew exactly why," a senior administration official said Saturday. "And Trump wanted to know why.”
Trump continued to ask questions about Syria's motive even after the strike, mentioning the lack of a clear motivation to friends and aides at Mar-a-Lago, according to people who spoke to him.
...
While many Syria experts in Washington endorse the official consensus that Assad is desperate to fend off even a weakened rebel opposition, they are still entertaining other theories.
... They include the possibility of a rogue military commander — perhaps loyal to Iran, which has sent troops and funding to prop up Assad — was trying to sabotage the possibility of a U.S.-Russia-Assad alliance that could isolate Tehran.
Another is that Assad was trying to psychologically terrorize his opposition through a so-called demonstration effect. This school of thought holds that “he’s showing the rebels, ‘I can get away with this,’” Salem said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
As for Assad, no evidence exists that he is the guilty party. Stephen Cohn just stated this on CNN. Of course, others on CNN jumped all over him. There is a push to get us into a war with Russia, led by McCain.
> The paragraph you cited was in relation to the “why”, not the “how”. There appears to be very little doubt about the “how”. You’re trying to conflate something about which there appears to be little or no doubt, with something else about which there is doubt.
No you dolt, the point is if intel guys lied about something as obvious as that, then they probably lied about everything. A president is in the position where they have to believe the intel that comes in, but if it’s all lies then of course he’s going to make bad moves.
Taking out Saddam was not the mistake. Taking out Saddam and not following through with a post WWII European occupation for the next 25 years was the mistake. And apparently we no longer have the fortitude for that.
Changing the Mideast culture to one that is western friendly will take at least a generation. Obama cut and ran the second he took office. He left the void that Tehran and ISIS have filled. As long as we have this wishy washy electorate, we cant make any long term commitments that allies can rely on. The best we can do is contain the problem in the ME.
Muslims have been fighting each other for centuries. Their cultures are incompatible with our Constitution. Our interference in country after country has only made things worse. We have no right to force any country to be like us.
Saddam invaded a sovereign nation in 1991, a nation we had a defense agreement with. We never finished the 91 Gulf War. Saddam violated both intent and letter of the cease fire agreement over the next 10 years. These agreements have to have meaning and consequences if you want to live in a world other than Mad Max like.
Yes Muslims have been in-fighting for centuries. But about every 200 or 300 years they seem to want to spill beyond their wasteland and trouble the rest of us infidels. We either box them, or we kill them. I don’t care which, but both strategies have costs involved.
I have never heard or seen anything that would support that NK is managing or flying anything in Syria.
Now, from completely different sources outside of my work world, I have a friend in the oil business with whom we have a mutual American citizen pilot acquaintance. This pilot, experienced but not with prior military service, took a contract “job” flying mirages for the Libyan air force. So I suppose its not unreasonable to believe that many of the ME countries have to hire out to pilot “mercs” to keep their planes flying. I have no idea if this is the case in Syria.
No, it is not like 2003. Had Saddam been left in power he would have nuclear weapons by now there should be no doubt. He was close when the Israelis bombed the facility making them when Reagan was president. He also had tons of yellow cake readily available for “dirty” bombs.
The only mistakes that were major were Bush not fighting the RATmedia trying to undermine the whole operation and not letting the people know that this would be a 25 year involvement with our military.
We still have forces in Germany and Japan 72 years after WWII, why would anyone believe this to be different?
BTW I am also convinced that Saddam had a hand in the Oklahoma City bombing. Read McVeigh’s last testament. I don’t remember him mentioning Waco but it was full of comments against the War on Saddam.
He had to go for many reasons. Even Congress under Clinton recognized this and passed a bill requiring regime change in Iraq.
You were saying?
You were saying?
Yeah, contrast those photos with photos of an actual sarin attack like Tokyo in 1995.
THIS is the key point.
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