[Zhang Fei]

This is a manufactured pretext.

It’s time the manufacturers were exposed and prosecuted.

---

I don’t doubt Assad did it. People do stupid things all the time. Others have done much dumber things. Stalin whacked most of the senior people in his officer corps before his plan to attack Germany was pre-empted by Operation Barbarossa. Hitler insisted on running the war personally in spite of repeated disasters caused by his mistakes. And Saddam made his move on Kuwait without foreseeing the practically unanimous global reaction to the threat of the unification of Gulf oil supplies under one ruler.

Of course, the people I’ve mentioned were playing for much higher stakes, whereas Assad’s civil war is basically won. Then again, Assad inherited his position, whereas Stalin, Hitler and Saddam were self-made men. So his mistake is much easier to understand - he’s just not as bright as his father was.

[thoughtomator]

Nonsense. There is a near-zero real-world chance that Assad actually ordered a chemical weapons attack.

It makes no sense as a military strategy.

It makes no sense as a political strategy.

One basically has to assume that a man who has kept control of a highly fractious nation for many years is actually completely arbitrary and suicidal.

This is not a realistic explanation.

The only realistic explanation is that the same forces which have been doing their best through deception and fraud to get the United States deeper and deeper into a war against Syria (and by proxy, against Russia) have concocted yet another lie.

I am not having any more friends die for their lies.

No more.

Never again.