Posted on 04/08/2017 5:02:13 PM PDT by Kaslin
Sean Keeley of The American Interest noticed a curious statement from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster when he briefed reporters on the Syrian strike.
And the one thing that I will tell you though, there was an effort to minimize – to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport – I think you read Russians from that – but that – and we took great pains to try to avoid that. […] And then there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas, so that that would not be ignited and cause a hazard to civilians or anyone else.
The conclusion is obvious. If the new Trump administration knew that there were storage containers of sarin gas, it stands to reason that the Obama administration knew it as well.
But...but...but...didn't the administration brag about removing "100%" of Syria's chemical weapons?
If this strike was arranged to avoid hitting sarin storage facilities, the question arises: did the Obama Administration know that such depots still existed after its “historic” deal that supposedly removed all Syria’s chemical weapons?
The signs point to yes. In Congressional testimony last February, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged “gaps and inconsistencies in Syria’s declaration,” validating reports that Syria was still hiding banned chemicals at undisclosed locations. And on its way out the door in January of this year, the Obama Treasury quietly introduced new sanctions against Syrian officials involved in chemical warfare. Buried in the language sanctioning a particular official was a telling admission: “As of 2016, Abbas has continued operating at locations in Syria associated with chemical warfare-related missions.”
Whether or not the Obama Administration knew of this particular sarin facility, then, they clearly knew that Syrians were still clinging to their stockpiles at several locations. They knew what Adam Garfinkle has been saying all along: that Obama’s deal to remove chemical weapons was not a historic diplomatic triumph but an unenforcable sham that the Syrians and Russians never intended to comply with.
The Daily Caller has some reminders of what the Obama administration was saying about the deal that supposedly removed Syria's chemical weapons:
In the wake of the recent chemical weapons that killed innocent civilians, including women and children, observers immediately recalled former President Barack Obama’s 2013 deal, which allowed the president to back down from his red line on chemical weapons, and the administration’s comments in the aftermath.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry stated in 2014 that the Obama administration “got 100 percent of the declared chemical weapons out of Syria.” Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice commented in January that the president and his team were “able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”
At the time, fact-checking site Poltifact reported that the administration’s comments were “mostly true;” however, the site has since re-evaluated its assessment. “Either Syria never fulling [sic] complied with its 2013 promise to reveal all of its chemical weapons; or it did, but then converted otherwise non-lethal chemicals to military uses.”
“One way or another, subsequent events have proved Kerry wrong,” the site explained.
Politifact refers to "non-lethal chemicals" being "converted" to military uses. They are talking about chlorine gas which, in liquid form, has many commercial and industrial uses. However, it is easily converted into gas which, when dropped on people, can be one of the deadliest gasses on the planet.
There have been several attacks by Syria using chlorine gas since 2013 that the Obama administration dismissed because they said that chlorine was not a "banned" substance and so was not a chemical weapon.
Many soldiers from World War I would vehemently disagree. Chlorine gas was one of the most widely used weapons during that war and it killed and maimed tens of thousands.
It has now been confirmed that sarin gas -- a weapon banned under the chemical weapons treaty -- was used in the attack on civilians last week. Apparently, the Obama administration hid their failure from the American people because if Obama had acknowledged the presence of sarin gas in Assad's arsenal, he would have had to do something about it.
Parting shot: Here are Democrats celebrating Obama's great "triumph" in getting rid of Syria's chemical weapons.
Reports of Syria Removing Its Chemical Weapons Were Greatly Exaggerated | SUPERcuts! #456
No there isn’t. You’d have a better chance of betting on Wrestleemania. Or the over on the Cena-Bella marriage.
There is no doubt they knew, but it would have been politically damaging to admit it. Obama conducted foreign policy thru the prism of domestic politics. It is why Obama was one of the most dangerous Presidents ever when it came to our national security. The Iran deal was mainly for domestic consumption. It had nothing to do with protecting this country.
Yes.
These people cannot be dead; there are no chemical weapons in Syria!
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq
The New York Times published an article that has re-ignited a 12-year-old debate: Was then-President George W. Bush right about Iraq? The report examined U.S. service personnel’s encounters with abandoned chemical weapons in Iraq – and some conservatives were quick to pounce on the story as evidence that claims by Bush in the lead-up to the war that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were true and that the United States’ 2003 invasion was justified.
The article by Times reporter C.J. Chivers focused on U.S. soldiers who suffered from exposure to the sulfur mustard and other nerve gases which emitted from the bombs. According to the story, about “5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs” were found scattered across Iraqi soil. The U.S. government buried the cases from both the public and the troops. As a result, injured soldiers did not receive proper medical treatment.
“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002.
The first was munitions that had been sealed in bunkers at Iraq’s Al Muthanna weapons complex by U.N. inspectors during the 1990s. The inspectors destroyed enormous quantities of chemical weapons at Al Muthanna between 1992 and 1994, including 480,000 litres of live chemical weapons agent, but some could not be incinerated because it was too dangerous to move it. The U.N. and U.S. knew these chemical weapons were there, Saddam Hussein knew they knew, and there was no way for the Iraqi military to access them without the world immediately finding out. But after the invasion the U.S. failed to secure the site, and insurgents broke into the bunkers to retrieve some of the munitions. This is well-known to anyone who follows this issue closely. However, the U.S. media, as Duelfer puts it, periodically “rediscover this and get excited about it.” (The Intercept explained some aspects of the remaining Al Muthanna munitions last fall.)
The U.S. government suppressed information about chemical weapons it found in Iraq, and several servicemembers were injured by their exposure to those weapons, The New York Times is reporting.
In an article the newspaper says it found 17 American service members and seven Iraqi police officers who were exposed to mustard or nerve agents after 2003. They were reportedly given inadequate care and told not to talk about what happened.
“From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by chemical weapons.
That enough? I can get more. And you can be assured these articles, written by the NY times and CNN, and not conservative in nature. This is a little crow eating.
red
You really need to seek help
Does a bear poo in the woods?
Of course, they did. They didn't care.
That is breaking news!!Do you have proof on that or is that what you want to believe after no wmd found ANYWHERE to justify 5000 American soldier lives— 40,000 soldiers wounded and maimed— 300,000 Iraqs dead and 2 fricken TRILLION DOLLARS completely flushed down the toilet? Hummmm? Show us the proof.
What a compete hoax and fabrication.Give up!!They were NOT there. It was a error. The greatest blunder in American history!!That is breaking news!!Do you have proof on that or is that what you want to believe after no wmd found ANYWHERE to justify 5000 American soldier lives— 40,000 soldiers wounded and maimed— 300,000 Iraqs dead and 2 fricken TRILLION DOLLARS completely flushed down the toilet? Hummmm? Show us the proof. You need to seek help. Reality is so painful.
The article states that “sarin use was confirmed” in so many words, yet I’ve neither seen anything remotely-resembling any such confirmation...
that was my thought. the munitions used were from the Iraq weapons program that we invaded Iraq to get but never found...
I Iraq sent its chemical weapons program to Syria in the months before we invaded. shortly after the war Israel actually bombed a great deal of the munitions. this was not covered because it did not fit the narrative that the democrat party was pushing of there being no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
What sort of evidence would you define as conclusive, if any?
I’m certain that no matter what evidence is provided, the goal posts will simply be moved to render it unacceptable, because opposition to intervention in Syria has nothing to do with what Syria does or doesn’t do, only what Russia wants or doesn’t want.
(1) I'd start with high def drone photos. A chemical bomb would need to explode at least 100 feet above the ground, so there should be visible bomb fragments within a large radius.
(2) Is there a crater or structural damage to a building? If yes, that almost certainly means the bomb was explosive, and not chemical, which means the bomb may have targeted an Al-Qaeda stockpile of sarin, which is exactly what the Russians and Syrians claim.
(3) The exact time the radar plot has the plane at the target site. Does that square up with the time of day that the gas victim videos were taken?
(4) Names, ages, and addresses of the victims. And, if necessary, exhumations to verify the number and identity of dead, the time of death, and the cause of death.
(5) Our first target at the Syrian air base should have been a massive Tomahawk strike on the alleged stockpile of sarin bombs. If there were dead bodies hundreds of yards away, then we would know that the Syrians have gas weapons.
I could go on...
Bottom Line - Could a federal prosecutor charge Assad with mass murder using the evidence presented by Trump?
Of course not.
Because there is no evidence.
0bama’s administration couldn’t care less about Syria and its chemical weapons.
To me, what stood out, and I have never seen explained, is that in the final weeks of the (endless) run-up to the U.S. invasion in 2003, convoys of heavy trucks under Russian escort were photographed by US spy planes and satellites traveling from Baghdad and environs to Damascus. These convoys were seen and reported in the mainstream media at the time.
Iraq and Syria, besides sharing a border, were close allies, were both part of the Ba'ath Socialist movement--which was organized and supported by the Soviet Union--and were both users of poison gas, at least in domestic conflicts.
Were there WMD, such as Sarin gas, in those trucks? I wasn't there. But I can't seriously imagine there was anything else--other than perhaps Saddam's crystal and silver--that would have been so important to take out of the country on the eve of our well-telegraphed invasion of Iraq. The view that Saddam had a change of heart and stopped using WMD voluntarily, or did NOT have some back-door arrangement for re-acquiring his supply from his close allies in Syria, doesn't seem to me like a serious view. That he had stocks of poison gas in the country is not in dispute, since he had used them in recent memory, and odd canisters of the stuff kept turning up in warehouses or buried in the ground as the US invasion advanced.
This is apart from any consideration of whether the war in Iraq (II) was well advised, which is another subject.
Has there been definitive evidence showing Assad and his military were the culprits here? It would seem like unwise timing, with a new US administration coming in and "first impressions" being important. Has there been serious denial by Assad and the Russians?
The great 0bama experiment was a total failure. No matter how many entities tried to cover up his messes they still managed to pop up. It about like a cat covering up after it craps the smell is still there
Were you there? I was. And my field was DP/NBC while I was down range. I had hoped you could understand the articles I sent that were by people that spent years saying what you said until they finally fessed up. An error? How can over a half dozen different countries find the same solution to include Hilary Clinton, CNN, the NY Times, some of the biggest attackers of Bush say the same thing, that they were there. How can you deny that they were there when it took inspectors coming in for Saddam to make available what he said was the last of the stuff he previously denied having was there for the incoming to destroy. How can you deny they were there when Russian middle range shell casings with traces of nerve agent on them were found, and missiles were fired into Israel during the Gulf War by Saddam. He killed his own people with mustard gas. And we are still finding buried tanks, aircraft, HE, and other things in the desert. I talked to one tanker that found some buried tanks up by the Syrian border that they hailed when detected, and ultimately partially destroyed when not answered. Look it up.
This one is from NBC, hardly a conservative stronghold:
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans in 2008. In Canada it will be lowered to industial grade for their power use:
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What’s now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
Sad you just don’t see the writing on the wall and you listen to sources that say things you want to hear. Well, if you feel people are lying to you, then I guess CNN, The New York Times, Hilary Clinton, both houses of congress, the FBI and CIA, homeland security and NBC are just talking through their teeth.
Good luck on your deciphering who is and is not lying to you. But it appears they are saying the same thing, just the opposite of your theory.
Thank you for the return.
red
He did know what channel was ESPN on the What House televisions.
I suspect he was familiar with the price of crack cocaine in the DC metro area.
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