Syria - what can be done

trisher

" By the way both sides have used chemical weapons. A substantial amount of chemical weapons has been removed from Syria- and guess where the stuff is destroyed and decommissioned- in western countries. So we supply the chemicals let them make the stuff and then dispose of the results. Big business it is! "

It is the b----d that mixes the chemicals, stores the chemicals and uses the end product on his own people that makes it necessary to dispose of it. I am sure nobody wants to do his dirty work but who do you think the OPCW should have given the contracts to?

Extracts from trishers link and it is a worthwhile read to understand the cat and mouse games that Assad /Russia has played with the UN and the OPCW -

2013 . Syria submitted a declaration of its stockpiles of chemical weapons to the OPCW.

2013 . The OPCW confirmed that Syria destroyed, or rendered inoperable, all of its declared facilities for mixing and producing chemical weapons. The OPCW was able to inspect 21 of the 23 sites where these facilities were housed. The remaining two sites could not be visited due to security concerns, but inspectors said that the equipment was moved out of these sites and destroyed.

2013 The OPCW announced that Syria's chemical weapons will be destroyed on a U.S. ship using hydrolysis. Hydrolysis is a process that breaks down chemical agents using hot water and other compounds to neutralize the agents.

2013 Syria missed the deadline for sending all of its chemical weapons out of the country. This deadline was set by a UN Security Council Resolution approved in September.

2014 The OPCW announced that two companies, one in Finland (Ekokem OY AB) and one in Texas (Veolia), were awarded contracts to dispose of the effluent created during the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.

2014 Reports emerged of an attack using chlorine-gas bombs in Kafr Zita, a village controlled by opposition forces in northwestern Syria.

2014. The OPCW announced that it would send a team to investigate the April 11 attacks that the Assad regime used chlorine gas.

2014 Syria missed the revised deadline to remove all of its chemical weapons stockpile from the country by the end of April. Approximately 8 percent of the stockpile, largely sarin precursor chemicals, remains in Damascus.

They are mere snippets but it goes on and on and Syria has got away with it time and again because Russia has backed Assad militarily and politically in Syria and at the UN.

So why have the Russians/Syrians given access to a journalist and not the OPCW? Makes no sense at all jura.

Everybody is accompanied by military and the organisation who check chemical weapons was not allowed into Douma earlier today.

jura that is old news ( and fake) and just what Russia has their ‘plants’ to say.

trisher 14.41

I knew about the link you provided and it was actually that timeline I based my post on at 10.47.

When you said " Actually there have been several incidents using chemical weapons from both sides " I have to ask if you noted more than the one chemical attack which I had previously mentioned in my post of 10.47 that had been attributed to ISIS ?

If anybody takes the time to read your link they will note that Assad and Russia have lied through their back teeth over holding and using chemical weapons.

We have just spoken to Robert Fisk (Foreign correspondent with The UK Independent) in #Douma, at 13.00 today, who says he is the 1st journalist to visit the clinic where the 'alleged' chemical attack took place. He went alone ie. not accompanied by military to see for himself. Everything is operating as per normal in a hospital. He confirms the following:
1. The footage is authentic - he could recognise the location
2. He spoke to doctors there who said that children were admitted coughing and spluttering
3. They were admitted AS A RESULT OF NEARBY SHELLING and DUST FUMES!
4. Someone created panic by shouting 'gas, gas, gas' and they began following procedure as they would in a gas attack by hosing them down
5. THERE WAS NO CHLORINE GAS ATTACK
REPEAT...
THERE WAS NO CHLORINE GAS ATTACK

Why do we not care about the Palestinian children?

Same for Yemen- why do we not care about their children - and still supply arms to the Saudis- whilst they continue to use illegal cluster bombs.

If I were cynical, I would use just one word - oil and arms money and trade- same old, same tragic old.

I remember it well.
I remember when they escaped over the mountains - some without shoes or warm clothes.

I did ask why the Kurds are still beleaguered in another post.

Nothing to do with Turkey -This was when Saddam was regarded by the west as a good way of suppressing Iran
The Halabja chemical attack (Kurdish: Kîmyabarana Helebce کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە), also known as the Halabja Massacre or Bloody Friday,[1] was a massacre against the Kurdish people that took place on March 16, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War in the Kurdish city of Halabja in Iraq. The attack was part of the Al-Anfal Campaign in northern Iraq, as well as part of the Iraqi attempt to repel the Iranian Operation Zafar 7. It took place 48 hours after the fall of the town to the Iranian army.

The attack killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injured 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians.
Where were the western missiles then?

well you know it wasn't.

I asked why Turkey is fighting the Kurds?

Saddam had chemical weapons long before we decided we didn't like him anymore. We supplied the chemicals. He used them on the Kurds (who don't count) and the Iranians (who we don't like) so that was all right wasn't it?

If Saddam had had chemical weapons, he had at least six months advance warning of Bush/Blairs intentions which gave him plenty of time to move them over the border or to some inaccessible place in Iraq. The weapons inspectors would never have found them, which doesn't mean he didn't have them!

How many now still believe that Saddam Hussein had WOMD and was about to use them, now?

I didn't need the lecture about twitter, Primrose. Just an answer to my question.

Actually there have been several incidents using chemical weapons from both sides. If you are interested in the timeline of what has happened it is here. www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity
Much more complicated and less simple than many are saying on here.

Excellent post Day6.

Who is Assad trying to overcome? ISIS, Al Quaeda et al. These are the extremist Islamic groups who want Western Europeans wiped off the face of the earth and replaced with their idea if a Caliphate. These are the groups that have beheaded our charity workers, road trucks over holiday makers and done the most unimaginable atrocities within the Middle East and yet the Uk has been proxy supporting them through Saudi Arabia.
If these groups can perform such atrocities, isn't it feasible that IF a chemical agent was released that they could not have been responsible on the basis that Assad is winning in Syria and these people would like nothing more than to incite a world war.

But trisher, diplomats have been working for a political solution without success for years too - is it stupid to continue with that? Sanctions have been applied but are not working - stupid too?

Well said Primrose

The PM is privy to intelligence that cannot be broadcast. She is advised by military strategists, and foreign governments, not just her cabinet.

We cannot sit back and do nothing. This was an isolated warning strike that we cannot legitimise the use of chemical weapons. Doing sod all achieves what, other than giving users of chemicals weapons the message that we do not have the means or inclination to stop them?

It as an isolated incident and was as far as military information is concerned, on target and successful. Let us not forget this was not a UK incident. Joint world forces said 'enough is enough' after warnings, sanctions and diplomacy had failed and chemical weapons were still being unleashed. France and America took part and the western world was in agreement.

Our government is entrusted to make these decisions. Listening to the radio today, military chiefs have said the PM, be it May, Corbyn, Cable etc, is given much information that is top secret. There is no way all the MPs in Parliament could decide on a course of action without this information to guide them - so voting whether to strike or not could not happen.

I believe we have to stand firm behind our government on such important issues. We can see how some elements of social media is stirred to decry everything Theresa May does.

Keyboard warriors are not privy to military briefings, to the workings of foreign governments and barbaric regimes.

I am of the opinion this isolated joint action was successful and only taken after much discussion around the world.

If international law is broken, and it doesn't matter who the perpetrator, Assad, Russia or other groups within Syria, the might of the world cannot stand by and watch. That would have been a cowardly act which endangered us all.

trisher I think you've misunderstood my post. I didn't say the strikes were a political solution at all.

You said
In fact it seems to me to be a bit stupid to continue with something that didn't work- which is a feature of the Trump administration of course.

I was merely pointing out that sometimes, even if things don't seem to work, you need to continue doing them.

You're reading so much into my short post that it's not worth trying to contribute to the thread - I'll simply be trying to refute all of your incorrect assumptions.

Primrose65 the strikes are not about a "political solution" even TM has admitted this. They were purely to prevent the use of chemical weapons- which they didn't do last time and probably won't this. By your logic if we dropped enough bombs on Syria the whole problem would be solved as there would be no-one left alive.
By the way both sides have used chemical weapons. A substantial amount of chemical weapons has been removed from Syria- and guess where the stuff is destroyed and decommissioned- in western countries. So we supply the chemicals let them make the stuff and then dispose of the results. Big business it is!

MaizieD I don't actually design weapons, and I don't know exactly what weapons were used. So no, it's not an absolute, incontrovertible scientific fact. It's just a best scientific guess as to how it could be done.

I'm really not interested in trying to validate or debunk anything people have seen on twitter - it's full of bots, fake pictures, fake news. Not sure it's the best place if you're after absolute, incontrovertible scientific facts!

Surely people must have been killed by these air strikes? Can anyone enlighten me?

Air strikes alone do not resolve conflicts (unless we are talking about nuclear attack).

It takes boots on the ground and I do not want to see British soldiers being sent to Syria, only to return in body bags, as far too many did after being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

^ I'd imagine you'd use bombs that explode at super high temperatures which would neutralise the chemicals.^

Is that an absolute, incontrovertible, scientific fact, Primrose? I ask because people on twitter are showing pictures of people in the bomb damaged sites and asking why they haven't been overcome by the dispersed chemical weapons.