"What’s unclear is where that red line now stands."
People are confused? But...but...0bama was SO GOOD at drawing those red lines when it came to Syria!
Posted on 04/15/2018 7:26:11 AM PDT by Mariner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the latest U.S. missile strikes, President Donald Trump appears to have reset America’s red line for military intervention in Syria over the use of chemical weapons.
What’s unclear is where that red line now stands.
The United States said its strikes were a response to President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on April 7 that administration officials say employed chlorine and perhaps even sarin, a more deadly nerve agent.
“A large body of information indicates that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council on Saturday.
Sarin had previously appeared to be the threshold for intervention. A sarin attack triggered Trump’s decision last year to strike a Syrian air base. A sarin attack in 2013 was also what nearly brought then-President Barack Obama to strike Syria.
Chlorine, in contrast, has been used more widely in Syria’s conflict without past U.S. reprisals, and the chemical itself is far easier to find and weaponize, experts say. That makes degrading it through military strikes far more difficult.
“Every city in the Middle East that has a water purification system probably has some chlorine. It is a common industrial chemical,” said Daryl Kimball at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, who favors broad action to deter use of chemical weapons, including chlorine.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
The issue is that the US has an emotionally centered red line with easily obtained chemicals on the wrong side of it.
ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran...every rogue nation and every terrorist group in the world learned a valuable lesson. They learned the might of the US will be employed over chemical attacks...against states.
I'm sure even the drug cartels in South America noticed.
Likely dozens of plans are being developed to bring down the wrath of US power on many regimes. False flags will abound. Likely Russian, Iranian and Norklandian intelligence are working with groups now.
Once attack may not do it, but two definitely will.
Helicopters and chlorine are easy to come by.
The moralists are in the drivers seat.
The realists are relegated to awaiting their turn, again.
Blur is good, keep them guessing.
"What’s unclear is where that red line now stands."
People are confused? But...but...0bama was SO GOOD at drawing those red lines when it came to Syria!
This whole bombing stinks.
Who gives a crap about Syria?
When Erdogan, CNN, and everyone in the Swamp is praising Trump, somethings WRONG.
Everything’s so blurry ....Song title from “puddle of mud”....Can’t fix Islam and Syria along with every other piece of ground on which the muzzies congregate is always the same outcome . Animals pure and simple. I like what our President is doing .
Its only blurry for them. Trump sees things in Hi-def 4K.
-Please list the terrorist organizations which have known chemical and biological warfare research centers and storage facilities.
-Can you cite one instance of terrorists using helicopters to drop chemical weapons?
-Do you have ISR, radar or IFF recordings of any terrorist organization conducting an airborne chemical weapon attack?
Your claims have an insurmountable burden of proof yet somehow you claim Syria doesn’t conduct the chemical attacks. I call that a lack of objectivity and bias.
The only “false flags” here are posters claiming Syria, Iran and Russia et al would not attack civilians with WMDs.
Don’t telegraph where the dang red line is make them wonder if they have crossed it why any civilized leader would use sarin or chlorine gas deserves to get the holy hell bombed out of him IMHO!
“Every city in the Middle East that has a water purification system probably has some chlorine. It is a common industrial chemical,”
President Trump made a big blunder here. He doesn't make many. (Nikki Haley was one) He announced he was pulling out of Syria before doing so. It gave the Masters of War time to stage this event and reverse that.
What I think back to is when Khaddafi defeated the "rebels" and NATO voted to give air cover so they could safely return home. Instead, NATO annihilated Khadaffi and Libya.
something's WRONG."
That's the crux of it. The civilized world, if indeed it still exists, cannot afford to allow the use of terror weapons to become normalized and eventually tolerated.
“Trump made a big blunder here.
“He announced he was pulling out of Syria before doing so.
“It gave the Masters of War time to stage this event and reverse that.”
Keep them guessing and make them run for their rotten, evil rodent lives.
Our President knows the risks. He knows what he is doing. I trust him because many good and righteous prayers have been spoken over him and he believes in those prayers even though he—like all of us—is very flawed.
“The only “false flags” here are posters claiming Syria, Iran and Russia et al would not attack civilians with WMDs.”
So true, and can be repeated enough.
The loony Putinistas here repeat their drivel so fequently that people just ignore it.
It’s important to put up the factual reality every once in a awhile.
And it’s fun watching them scurry back to their caves once they’ve been proven wrong, repeatedly.
” ...war is coming....ww3...nuclear armeggedon...blah blah”
If you’d read for comprehension, you would find that I did not assert that the Douma attack was a terrorist attack.
You are making emotional leaps and ascribing them as facts.
I believe Trump and Mattis on this.
But, I say that will likely emerge as a problem in the future with false flags designed to use US power against regimes that are the target of terrorist and/or cartel organizations.
As I said, chlorine and helicopters are easy to come by.
I have no argument with his policies. Just imagine what he could do if the hounds weren’t nipping his heels 24/7.
This does not meet the high standards set by the Obama-Clinton air campaign against Libya.
/sarc
I agree with what I think you mean. I too, for the most part, believe these men are well-intentioned men. But it is difficult for a reasonable mind to switch on and off from asserting most days that:
Much of the top military brass and most of the intel apparatus are still Obama sown tares who wish The Don, The General, me and you ill.
To occasionally saying:
I somehow illogically trust completely that those tares are providing our two honest men God's honest truth.
Many people, including high officials from other nations and ours have serious questions about the so-called 'chemical attacks'. Even Mattis has hedged on the evidence used to justify Trump's first annual spring flip/flop on his once-strident/candidate-promise get-the-hell-out Syria policy - and this now 2nd annual flip/flop is at least as dubious as the first. Now the Swiss have shown evidence that the narrative about highly pure Putin nerve assassinating Brits is wrong. Apparently it was ours, or at least western nerve that did the killing.
Throw in the absurd notion that usage of household chemicals is somehow all of a sudden considered a weapon of mass destruction... and our entire limp-wristed intervention seems even more contrived. Certainly it is true that chlorine has killed billions of lives, but most of them are bacteria and other microscopic terrorists. At the level of concern to the lives in my swimming pool, I'm Assad on steroids. And the sun is Donald Trump - casually, based on political clouds and such, bombing and somewhat degrading my capabilities in that regard, costing me a bit more money but not at all preventing my mission.
At the human level, if our long-time ally Chlorine is now a weapon of mass destruction, then based on anyone's casualty numbers Assad's, America's and any school shooter's conventional weapons should be considered weapons of hyper-massive destruction.
If stats alone made decisions (as they will in master Zuck's AI-based future) then we'd be bombing Syria to force them to ONLY use the highly less effective and less reliable chlorine as opposed to normalized weapons - which, of course, ALL rely on chemicals to deliver fire and lead through victims while also totally destroying the physical surroundings any survivors would need to, well, survive.
It's tough to believe any government or man nowadays. Especially with Logic and Occam screaming in one ear and everyone on TV screaming in the other. But whether or not American or any other arrogant and fallible earthly force can determine the ultimate fate of Syria, Damascus specifically, boils down to whether you trust the famous atheist prophet Kabuki more than God's prophet Isaiah.
Regardless whether you believe telegraphing enemies and bombing whatever they decide not to move in the meantime is somehow a glorious victory... and regardless whether our weapons were/are effective or commie weapons were even used... the ONLY thing a lowly Trump voter can self-verify at this point is that our guy promised, vehemently, one thing regarding Syria and has now doubled down on the opposite.
Pray for Trump and Mattis to have the wisdom to decipher who is telling the truth. But don't blindly trust any man with delivering it to them.
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