Tag: WMDs

Is It WMD All Over Again?

Remember back in the Dark Ages, 2003, and the hunt for those non-existent WMDs in Iraq?

And then last week we had the horrible attack by Assad (still not a proven line) with Chemical weapons on his own people….and suddenly we have similar dialog as we did back in 2003…..

What does this mean?  All the rhetoric seems to lean toward more involvement than just airstrikes…..could it be?

It’s WMD all over again. Why don’t you see it?

Actually knowing something, remembering history or having experience of the world is becoming a disadvantage. How much easier it would be to join in with the flow of opinion about Syria, to listen happily to, and read contentedly, media reports on the subject.

As it is, I feel something close to a physical pain as I do this.

Today’s frenzy over alleged use of poison gas in Syria is the 2017 version of Anthony Blair’s WMD in Iraq. Why can you not see it? Did you think they would do it in exactly the same way again? You are being assailed through your em

Source: It’s WMD all over again. Why don’t you see it? – Mail Online – Peter Hitchens blog

Americans need to pay attention or we could be off on more adventurism that will cost lives and the destruction of everything.

When A Good Man Goes To War

It’s official!  50+ missiles fired at a Syrian air base……

The United States has attacked a Syrian air base with roughly 60 cruise missiles in response to a chemical weapons attack it blames on President Bashar Assad. US officials say the Tomahawk missiles were fired from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea, targeting a government-controlled air base in Syria, reports the AP. The move comes after US officials accused Syrian aircraft of killing dozens of civilians by using chlorine mixed with a nerve agent, possibly sarin, earlier this week. President Trump, who had said the Syrian attack crossed “many, many lines” for him, said Thursday night that it was in the “vital national security interest” of the United States to stop the use of chemical weapons.

Syrian state TV reported a US missile attack on a number of military targets and called the attack an “aggression.” The Washington Post notes that the US attack brings with it a heightened risk of confrontation with Syria supporters Russia and Iran. Russia initially defended Assad after the civilian deaths, saying that government airstrikes had hit chemical weapons being stored illegally by rebels. But on Thursday, a Kremlin spokesman made a point to say that its support was not “unconditional.” Hundreds of US troops are currently stationed in Syria, advising local forces ahead of an assault on the city of Raqqa, an ISIS stronghold.

How did it come to this?

A couple of days ago chemical weapons were used in Northwest Syria on a civilian population…..and as usual there is no shortage of finger pointing as to the culprit of use.

The day of the attack an unusual suspect was taunted as the cause……

An apparent chemical attack that killed scores of people Tuesday is being called one of the worst atrocities of the Syrian civil war—and President Trump blames his predecessor. The “heinous” actions of the Assad regime “are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution,” Trump said in a statement, per NBC News. “President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red line,’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.” Syrian activists say at least 72 people, including many children, were killed in a regime airstrike on a rebel-held town in Idlib province.

Obama did it!

Before the attack our napping SecState made a statement about Assad and Sen. Rubio is claiming that statement lead to the attack…..

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday that he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria occurred shortly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad could remain in power.

“In this case now, we have very limited options and look, it’s concerning that the secretary of state, 72 hours ago or a week ago, last Friday, said that the future’s up to the people in Syria on what happens with Assad. In essence almost nodding to the idea that Assad was gonna get to stay in some capacity,” Rubio said on the show “AM Tampa Bay.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a few days later we see this,” Rubio concluded.
This attack has the politicos using Tillerson’s words to accuse…..now I am in no way a supporter of Tillerson but this is just silly to blame him as if Assad was waiting for “permission” to use chemical weapons.
Even our new UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, has gotten on her moral high horse……..
Scores were killed in Syria’s Idlib province on Tuesday in what the New York Times calls “the worst chemical attack in years” in the war-torn country. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is saying it had nothing to do with it, and Syrian ally Russia is also deflecting blame, claiming that an airstrike hit a “terrorist” chemical weapons workshop in Khan Sheikhoun, dispersing the poison, now widely believed to have been a nerve agent like sarin gas. But members of the Trump administration, as well as other US politicians, are now blasting Vladimir Putin for protecting Assad, with UN Ambassador Nikki Haley taking the lead at a UN Security Council gathering Wednesday, the Washington Post reports. “How many more children have to die before Russia cares?” she asked at the special session that was prompted by a request from Britain and France.
“When the U.N. consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action,” Haley told the U.N. Security Council at an emergency meeting called in response to Tuesday’s suspected chemical attack in Syria’s northern province of Idlib.
Just days before the attack she echoed what Tillerson had said…….
Some are noting that just last week, Haley said removing Assad from power was no longer a US priority and that the US had to “pick and choose” its battles; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said last week that Assad’s fate was now up to the Syrian people, per Reuters.
America did what it always does….mounts its high moral horse…..and all the while ignoring the children in Yemen and Palestine…just another indication of the hypocrisy.
Threats abound….will Trump take this opportunity to launch a “surprise” attack on Assad?  Trump has said this attack is “beyond the red line” and “would not be tolerated”…..
Source: ‘Beyond a Red Line’: Trump Might Just Launch Surprise Attack on Syria | Common Dreams
What will be the response?  First who used the chemical weapons?  Maybe it would be a good idea to know who used these weapons before we jump head long into the fire.
The U.S. government and the mainstream media rushed to judgment again, blaming the Syrian government for a new poison-gas attack and ignoring other possibilities,
With the latest hasty judgment about Tuesday’s poison-gas deaths in a rebel-held area of northern Syria, the mainstream U.S. news media once more reveals itself to be a threat to responsible journalism and to the future of humanity. Again, we see the troubling pattern of verdict first, investigation later, even when that behavior can lead to a dangerous war escalation and many more deaths.
Before a careful evaluation of the evidence about Tuesday’s tragedy was possible, The New York Times and other major U.S. news outlets had pinned the blame for the scores of dead on the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. That revived demands that the U.S. and other nations establish a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which would amount to launching another “regime change” war and would put America into a likely hot war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Source: Another Dangerous Rush to Judgment in Syria – Consortiumnews
Do we need to wait for “Frat Boy” Jared to come home from his time in the spotlight so he can flip the coin for his daddy-in-law”?

Whose Idea Was The 2003 Invasion Of Iraq?

We Americans have heard all the horror stories about the lies that lead to the 2003 invasion of Iraq…….all the back door moves and all the misinformation….

The Bushites went to the Hill and made the case that No one could resist for the overthrow of Saddam…..of course there was the infamous WMDs…..that did not exist……then there was the ‘mushroom’ cloud analogy that Repubs are always pushing……all in all a beautiful package of lies……and off the country went to….do or die.  And 14 years later we are still paying for the lies.

But was there more to the invasion than we have been told?  Did AIPAC and Israel have any hand in the decision to invade?

Just a little FYI……………

 

AIPAC’s 2001-2004 ‘Briefing Book’ Made Case for Regime Change In Iraq « LobeLog.

Iraq: OMG! Please Not Again!

Remember the good old days when the airways were full of the lie of Iraqi WMDs?  Remember our knee jerk response to the lie was to invade Iraq and bring them security and democracy?

Just how did that work out for us?

In those days the media played an integral part of the massive deception of the American people to support a war we knew would bite us in the butt……but we could not let Saddam use those weapons again.  He had already gassed his own people, the Kurds to be exact……

Do you recall that after years of invasion and searching there were NO WMDs to be found…..remember that?

Well sports fans the media is at it again!

Gassing Iraqi Kurds was considered one of Saddam Hussein’s most heinous crimes, and American officials now suspect that ISIS is doing the exact same thing—and it may be using Saddam’s old weapons. Officials believe the militants used mustard gas, a chemical weapon banned worldwide in 1993, against Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq this week, reports the Wall Street Journal. The group’s battlefield use of the agent is obviously an extremely worrying development, officials say, and it’s not clear how ISIS obtained it: It could be from one of Saddam’s old stockpiles or from stockpiles in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad claimed in 2013 that all the regime’s mustard gas had been destroyed.

“If they do possess these kind of weapons,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff tells CNN, “my guess is they’re more likely to have gotten them as old weapons left over in Iraq from the old WMD program there than they were likely to obtain them in Syria in some kind of a hidden cache of the regime’s.” ISIS seized the Saddam regime’s old chemical weapons plant last year, though officials said at the time that anything left there was probably useless. US officials have downplayed the risk to American personnel in Iraq, saying they’re not engaged in combat and, in any case, mustard gas “has to be used in high concentrations to be fatal,” the Journal reports. (In the years after the 2003 invasion, the US government

OMG!  Here we go again!   WMDs were used in 1990 and again in 2003…..seems like every 12 years or so they must make the case for a war in Iraq…..

Is this the open salvo from the media to gain popular support for sending in the troops to do the heavy lifting against ISIS?

Are the American people really that STUPID?

Where Oh Where Have All The WMDS’s Gone?

Over the years from the first Gulf War I have been entertained by the continuing saga of the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq….it has been the source of many reports few of which were ever accurate…..but it has made for some amusing hours of reading…….

It was essential that the US invade Iraq to stop his possible use of WMDs……and his complacency with AQ in Iraq.  We invade and dammit there were no WMDs found…..and all the public got for that lie was….”my bad”.

A decade later another story comes out that the WMDs were there and just expertly hidden……and the press chased that story for about a month and in the end all we got was…….”oops my bad”.

But what compels the medias to go chasing WMDs every time it is mentioned?  Does news need to be concocted to sell papers?

 

Twelve Years Later, US Media Still Can’t Get Iraqi WMD Story Right – The Intercept.

Is MSM Making A Case For War?

I know my readers are weary of all my redundancy concerning the MSM……I hold the belief that it is the media that controls almost all our actions……no matter how they try to conceal it they are making a case for our military return to Iraq…….

What say you Professor?

In the last week or so there has been reports of ISIS or ISIL or IS (you choose the one you prefer) is turning to WMDs….kinda like the WMDs that Bush used to originally go into Iraq in 2003…….

Saddam Hussein’s former chemical-weapons stronghold outside Baghdad is in the hands of ISIS militants, Iraq said in a letter to the UN yesterday, confirming previous reports. The letter stated that on June 11, “armed terrorist groups” commandeered Saddam’s Muthanna facility, which includes two bunkers believed to hold some 2,500 sarin-filled rockets, 2,000 artillery shells contaminated with mustard gas, and 180 tons of sodium cyanide. The good news? The weapons are decades old, were bombed in the first Gulf War, and a UN report previously dismissed the sarin weapons as “poor quality” and likely to be “degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there,” reports the AP.

While the US has expressed “concern” about the hostile takeover of Muthanna, Reuters notes that last month a Defense Department spokesman echoed the UN sentiments. “Should they even be able to access the materials, frankly, it would likely be more of a threat to them than anyone else,” he said. The Iraqi ambassador stated in his letter to the UN that Iraq would resume its mission of chemical-weapons destruction after it wrests the facility back from the Sunni Muslim insurgents.

But use is this site if there were NO WMDs found after our invasion?

There is more…….

Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations Mohammed Ali Alhakim has informed the United Nations today that some 40 kg of “nuclear materials” have been seized by ISIS, and “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.”

ISIS apparently got the radioactive compounds at the University of Mosul when they seized the city, and while Iraq was keen to push the idea of a proliferation risk, US officials familiar with Iraq’s remaining nuclear capabilities say there is little real risk.

That’s because what was in Mosul was not enriched uranium, let alone enriched to weapons grade. That means even if ISIS somehow built a whole enrichment program for this fairly trivial amount of uranium they’d be able to produce only about 288 grams of weapons-grade uranium, far short of what is needed for a single bomb.

The attempt to equate anything nuclear with a WMD is simply not true, and while it is conceivable that any isotopes could be used in some sort of “dirty bomb,” the realistic damage of such a weapon is minimal, much smaller than the problems the US caused with its widespread use of depleted uranium munitions during the occupation.

Okay we now have the threat of a possible sarin attack and the use of a possible dirty bomb…..does any of that sound vaguely familiar?

Geez, could not wait any longer….the media is attempting to make the case for intervention by the tries and true use of the threat of WMDs.

Here we go again!

Iraq: The Media’s Play Toy

Yes, I know….everyone is aware of what is happening in Iraq and each one of us has an opinion of just how to deal with the situation.  I have been monitoring the media very carefully….after they played an important part n selling the original invasion of 2003…..I just wanted to see what they will do this time around…….

The prez has said that there would be no American combat forces sent to Iraq……..and then he announced that there would be 300 “advisers sent to help the Iraqi army……(say that to a Vietnam vet and see the smile creep across their face)………

Here is why they are smiling…..Special Forces are combat troops…..that is their main function……so it is a lie to say that NO combat forces will be sent to Iraq.

As the first time Americans went into Iraq…..the media is playing the public like a two dollar drum……..the one story that I was following………

The facility outside Baghdad where Saddam Hussein cooked up his chemical weapons is now in the hands of extremists trying to take over the country, reports the Wall Street Journal. The good news is that the al-Muthanna facility has been mothballed for so long that US officials don’t think militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will be able to make any use of it. The takeaway quote from a State Department spokesperson: “We do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely move the materials.” (Saddam is believed to have made sarin, mustard gas, and other poisons there during his war with Iran in the 1980s.)

The UK Telegraph talks to an expert of its own with a similar take, along with a sliver of worry: “It is doubtful that ISIS have the expertise to use a fully functioning chemical munition, but there are materials on site that could be used in an improvised explosive device,” he says. “We have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before and has carried out experiments in Syria.” US officials tell the Journal that remaining chemical weapons stocks are sealed in bunkers at the site and would be useless even if accessed. Still, one Pentagon official says the US might have tried to remove them had it known the Iraqi government would so swiftly lose control. The site is about 45 miles northwest of Baghdad.

In case they need to make a good reason for intervention…..WMDs would be a good place to start….it was a good start in 2003…..it may work yet again if handled properly…….

Now let’s look at just how the Iraqi government was caught off balance for this situation to have a great start……a story that most have not heard…..it is important and should have been reported immediately…………

Atheel Nujeifi, who headed Nineveh province, accused the Shiite premier of causing widespread anger at the central government that allowed the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant to capture the provincial capital last week.

He said Mr Al Maliki “never listened” to repeated warnings about the deteriorating security situation around Mosul.

In an interview with The National, Mr Nujeifi painted a picture of escalating chaos in the days before Iraq’s second-largest city fell to the militants.

Widespread Sunni anger burst into the open in January when militants captured the western city of Fallujah, another Sunni stronghold.

That enabled ISIL militants to stage a blitzkrieg takeover of Mosul that began on June 9 and ended with the militant group seizing control of the city and looting more than US$400 million (Dh1.47bn) from banks in the area, Mr Nujeifi said.

He claimed to have warned Mr Maliki and his military advisers “several times” about ISIL’s rise, including during a meeting of provincial governors in Baghdad in January, at about the time Fallujah was seized by militants.

During the meeting, he slipped the prime minister a note urging him to reconsider his approach to handling Nineveh’s deteriorating security situation and listen to military commanders near Mosul who were raising alarms about the security situation.

Maybe someone is listening in Washington….there seems to be a push to make Maliki more inclusive in his government to bring in more Sunnis……but now I would like to hear an answer to the question…..what are the choices if Maliki does not succumb to the pressure from DC?

I do not know your feeling about what should be done to contain the situation in Iraq….but I suggest that you keep an eye on the media…..they will lead the way to whatever decision is made……and the selling of whatever action they decide is appropriate……

CSA And CWs

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  American History

Today is learn your American history day…….a few little known facts and events than most of our textbooks teach…….

Back about a year go Syria used WMDs, chemical weapons, against its people and the rebels…….and of course the world went crazy screaming all sorts of one lners and calling for the Assad admin to be charged with genocide or something equally horrendous…..

Chemical weapons (CWs) have been used in recent history….WW1 comes to  mind with its Muster gas….Saddam gassing the Kurds as a punishment for the rebellion against his authority…

Let me step back for a moment….I live in the South and they are still proud of their actions in the American Civil war…..to many the South did NO wrong…..the South was just standing up for its rights….so on and so on………

I know….just what the Hell does that have to do with the use of CWs, right?

Bear with me and I will connect the dots for you………..

The US Civil War foreshadowed World War I in important ways—like trench warfare, new technologies, and violence against civilians—but few of us know about its forays into chemical warfare, the New York Times reports. For one thing, leaders on both sides saw the importance of disease before scientists fully knew how germs worked. Union leaders blockaded Southern ports, cutting off medical supplies and widening the spread of malaria. Meanwhile, Southerners planned to send clothing from yellow-fever patients to Union units, or ship dead patients to Union-occupied New Orleans. Neither plan went into action, but other innovations arose:

  • A Southern sympathizer in Kentucky planned to lace clothing with smallpox and sell it to Union men in Washington; one Union lieutenant may have gotten sick that way.
  • Confederate troops retreating from Vicksburg drove animals into ponds and shot them, apparently to contaminate drinking water.
  • Union troops employed various kinds of Greek fire—incendiary mixes that gave off noxious fumes and sometimes floated on water. Long-range shells with incendiary compounds were used to limited effect.
  • Confederates had various chemical-weapon plans, such as raiding the Monitor ironclad with chloroform, or firing a shell with chemical agents, but neither were used.

For more on the Civil War, Business & Heritage Clarksville reports on a new documentary series, Civil War: The Untold Story, which looks at the Western theater and little-known roles played by African Americans.

There are always events and facts that are left out of the story……personally, I want to know it all……I do not care whether it is good or bad….all the facts need to be presented and in doing so….taught.

I hope I have given you a new insight into history……for…THAT IS WHY I AM HERE!

 

 

Is Syria Still There?

You bet your butt it is still there and as horrific as usual…the latest reports are not optimistic…..

As the Syrian civil war enters its fourth year, millions of children are at risk amid harrowing conditions caused by the collapse of the country’s health care system, a report from the Save the Children charity warns.

  • More than 10,000 children have died in the violence, but “it is not just the bullets and the shells that are killing and maiming children,” the report warns. Save the Children’s research revealed almost medieval health conditions in cities such as Aleppo, where there were 2,500 doctors before the war but fewer than 40 now, reports the New York Times. The group found that thousands of children are dying from diseases that could either have been treated or easily prevented under normal conditions.
  • Some 200,000 Syrians are believed to have died from chronic illnesses since the start of the conflict because of a lack of treatment, compared to an estimated 140,000 killed by violence, Reuters finds. Vaccination coverage has fallen sharply and diseases such as measles and meningitis are spreading along with polio, which has now infected an estimated 80,000 Syrian children.
  • The nightmarish consequences of the health system’s collapse include newborns dying in incubators amid power cuts, children having limbs amputated due to a lack of equipment for proper treatment, and patients being knocked out with metal bars because of a shortage of anesthetic, the report found.
  • Amnesty International, meanwhile, accuses the Syrian regime of using “starvation of civilians as a weapon of war,” the BBC reports. Around 20,000 refugees are trapped in a besieged camp in Damascus and at least 60% are suffering from malnutrition, the group warns.
  • In some rare good news to emerge from Syria, a group of Greek Orthodox nuns kidnapped by rebels in December have been released, according to another BBC report. The 13 nuns, who worked in a convent orphanage, say they were mostly well treated by their captors.

So yes Syria is still raging out of control it is that it is not important enough for the media to care……………

I heard the press secretary say that situations in Syria were showing some signs of growing success…..I’m kinda guessing that this was not what he was speaking of…..

Syria will miss a major deadline next week in the program to destroy its chemical weapons production facilities, sources at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said on Thursday.

Syria declared 12 production facilities to the OPCW and has until March 15 to destroy them under a deal agreed with the United States and Russia. Damascus has already missed several deadlines laid out in the agreement.

“That will definitely be missed,” said an official involved in discussions with Syria, referring to the March 15 deadline.

These are the weapons that the whole world was soooooo concerned with 6 months ago….now….not so much.

But that is the way of things….the media tells us all what is important and when……DEMAND better!

And Then There Is Syria

Do you remember Syria?  That obscure little country about 6 months ago that the prez was a coward for not attacking?  You remember, right?  Something about the use of chemical weapons on a civilian population…..think about it?

Any way while the world looks to South Africa and the passing of a Man For The Ages, Nelson Mandela…..Syria is still burning and Syrians are still dying…..within all this destruction there is a bit of good news…..according to the AP…..

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in a statement that its experts in Syria also have verified the destruction of parts of buildings at weapons production facilities.

The latest destruction work was near the city of Homs. The OPCW said the sites had been inaccessible due to security reasons.

The joint United Nations-OPCW team in Syria aims to remove the most toxic chemicals from Syria by the end of the year for destruction at sea and destroy the entire program by mid-2014.

The OPCW said last month that it already had verified the destruction of 63 percent of Syria’s unfilled munitions — which can be used in chemical weapons attacks — and that Syria had said it had destroyed all the munitions, however the total destruction had not been verified.

The good news is that the CWs are being slowly but slowly eliminated….now they need to work on all other forms of death and destruction……but while the world was distracted…..in an article from the WaPo……

Nine million people need humanitarian assistance. More than 2 million Syrians are refugees in neighboring countries. More than 3 million others are now beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies, according to the United Nations. All of these numbers increase daily; hence the urgent international calls for more direct humanitarian assistance and the scrambling diplomatic activity. With no prospect of Western military aid to end the conflict and little likelihood of a negotiated solution, greater humanitarian assistance is seen as the only way of helping millions of beleaguered people for an uncertain time — an extraordinary admission of political failure.

Americans have not collectively expressed great concern or reached deep in their pockets to provide desperately needed aid, nor have humanitarian agencies aggressively pursued funds from the public. Aid has come mostly from increasing government appropriations. The absence of public clamor has made it easier for the Obama administration to stay on the sidelines of this international wreck, seek empty U.N. resolutions and get away with providing funds for humanitarian assistance without doing more to resolve the issue. The U.S. secretary of state did not even attend the most recent U.N. pledging conference to scrounge monies from stingy states. Our government does not want public clamor.

We just do not care!  I say that it appears as such to me….we only care when the news outlets tells us we care and that is the saddest part of this saga……we just do not care enough to seek out the info and the truth……..