View Full Version : Assad moves chemical weapons, protection gear distributed to troops, say rebels
Skybird
07-13-12, 06:06 AM
Things are set to turn really nasty now, if this indication indeed indicates what it seems to indicate.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303644004577523251596963194.html
There also are indications that a campaign of ethnical cleansing is being run to secure territories that Assad's ethnic group could defend against a Syrian "rest-state". If he is set for that scenario, then this conflict will rage on for years and years.
Chemical weapons?! I wouldn't be surprised at a possible NATO/UN intervention in that case.
I don't know, Halabja didn't provoke a UN response, although it was a different era back then.
TLAM Strike
07-13-12, 09:27 AM
Chemical weapons?! I wouldn't be surprised at a possible NATO/UN intervention in that case.
We didn't exactly do much in Libya to contain their chemical weapons stockpiles when we were intervening.
As I remember the Rebels found a bunch and called us to pick it up. :nope:
I'm just glad AQIM didn't find the damn things.
Dive! Dive! Dive!
07-13-12, 10:00 AM
Well now things get serious :hmmm:......
I think it's time NATO/UN did something about it and rid Syria and the World of this regime once and for all! :/\\!!
And Russia and China are not helping at all :nope:
Seth8530
07-13-12, 11:37 AM
The use of chemical weapons would ruin any shred of credibility that syria has left.
Skybird
07-13-12, 03:20 PM
It is such a chaos there, and a proxy war, and a religious war. Iran ahs troops on the ground invovled, lining up with Assad. Sunnis versus Allevites. Saudi-payed mercenaries are said to be engaged, too. The opposition - plural, please, with at least some of these factions probably committing atrocities like the regime, to trigger an intervention ion their behalf. Most of them seem to be fundamentalists. And Turkey, I think nobody has a clue what kind of game they play over there, but they want to be the locally dominating power, at least this is clear. I am 90% sure that Turkish troops already operate inside Syria.
Chemicals yes or no, after thinking about it I think we are well advised to still stay out out there, no matter what. This could end up like Lebanon, with a war lasting for a two-digit number of years. We should not wish to get entangled in it. We have no stakes in this game. Let the Saudis and the Persians clean this up.
Tribesman
07-14-12, 04:33 AM
The opposition - plural, please, with at least some of these factions probably committing atrocities like the regime, to trigger an intervention ion their behalf. Most of them seem to be fundamentalists.
But errr...you said they are fighting the iranians, yet the Iranians are the fundamentalists aren't they, and the Iranians are backing Assad who is a alawite muslim and all muslims are fundamentalists according to you.
So out of all the various factions in this sillyness you are trying to point at one group and say "oh no its the fundies watch out for those ones", while all the time saying "they are all fundies and all the same so watchout for the fundies".
We have no stakes in this game.
But if we don't stop them there then we will be fighting the islamic horde here...I read it on one of your favourite hate blogs :yep:
Let the Saudis and the Persians clean this up.
You mean let the fundamentalists or the fundamentalist win by beating those other fundamentalists.
ME reality show....place the bets on the winner.
.
Jimbuna
07-14-12, 10:26 AM
There is another possibility....Russia and China may get tired of the image they are portraying to the international community and put pressure on him to stand down.
There is another possibility....Russia and China may get tired of the image they are portraying to the international community and put pressure on him to stand down.
It's possible, they've roped in the Kims before on the quiet.
Skybird
07-14-12, 11:19 AM
There is another possibility....Russia and China may get tired of the image they are portraying to the international community and put pressure on him to stand down.
Only imaginable if the West guarantees them the opposition will allow Russia their Mediterranean only naval base. Uncertain that the West has so much influence on the opposition to be able to give such a guarantee.
Assad belongs to the minority group of the Allevites. Most Syrians are Sunni, I think, but the Allevitres hold the power and control business, police, government, military. To give up Assad thus is an issue you have to propose to the Allevites. But the allevites sfihgt to stay in power, and not to get slaughtered i revenge in case of a Sunni victory. That'S why the Sunni gets ethnically cleansed out of areas close to the coast currently that the Allevites hope to be able to hold militarily.
A total blockade of weapons and ammuntiion to the regime, and allowing older style Russian weapons to the opposition, but n o modern Wetsern equipement that sooner or later will be directed at Israel and the West again. That'S the way to go for the West - at best. We should have done it like that in Libya already, and should have kept our mouths quite over Egypt and Tunisia alltogether.
I just realised that I have not read a single word ever to what degree the Kurds are engaged in the conflict.
Assad 'will use chemical weapons if cornered' - Syrian ex-ambassador.
And a bit more sinister are unconfirmed reports that they have already been used.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18864629
This is going to be a big stick that the US are going to beat China and Russia with, whether it will be enough to beat them into submission is unknown, as Skybird has put, Russias primary concern is its naval base, and as for China, probably something to do with oil or money.
It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation, if we intervene then there's a risk that a government that is against the west will come to power in the aftermath and if we don't the same problem arises. The only difference is the length of time it will take.
Personally, I think that the US has to focus more on key resources than keeping the peace, as we move into the potential beginning of peak oil, then Africa is going to be the new playground of the giants as the Middle Eastern oil starts to run out. Syria serves no strategic point to the US other than pushing the Russians out of the Mediterranean, and is that worth the funding needed to be put into a successful regime change mission? I doubt it, although it would block the Russians from Africa...but they're not the ones that the US needs to block, it's the Chinese that they want to block in Africa, but they're moving too little, too late to blunt the already impressive in-roads that the Chinese have made.
Time will tell, sod all we as the general plebes can do about it, but it makes for interesting watching from a geo-political viewpoint, if not horror at the scale of massacres going on.
Blood_splat
07-16-12, 07:33 PM
Check out Assad's thugs.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-auhSKl6Zhbk/T9i-j_a9pDI/AAAAAAAAHaE/SGa25fogGeE/s1600/Syria's+ghost+killers.jpg
TLAM Strike
07-16-12, 08:18 PM
Check out Assad's thugs.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-auhSKl6Zhbk/T9i-j_a9pDI/AAAAAAAAHaE/SGa25fogGeE/s1600/Syria's+ghost+killers.jpg
I see not all of Khan's men escaped on the Botany Bay.
:hmm2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18864629
No word about Iran and Hezbollah?
Skybird
07-24-12, 11:15 AM
Yesterday or the day before Syrian regime said that it will use chemicals in case of "foreign interference" without specifying what they understand under that term. It also is repiorted that alreay weeks ago they have moved stopckpoiles of chemicals to places near the border, away fromt he hotspots of ground battles.
Today Israel'S Lieberman told NATO at a summit that Israel is ready to go to war immediately if it sees a risk that radicals or Hezbollah are gaining or are being given chemical or biological weapons. Hezbollah seeks possession to such weapons since long time.
I don'T know. While it loks messy already right now, I think the real nightmare will begin when Assad is gone and the many diverse interests and mutual hostilities between different factions and foreign powers openly break out. After all, this is very much a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Turkey hvaikng a very sharp look at how things are going, but I think Turkey is not ready to go to war over Syria. I think Syria will become another Lebanon, and the violence possibly will last for many many years to come.
It also got reported that former SAS members are training parts of the rebels.
And I wonder where all the weapons rebels recently got suddenly were coming from, and who payed them...
It seems the region has one hotter than hot hotspot more now, with turkey and Israel both needing to take into account the possibility that they will get pulled right into the middle of the mess, too, whether they want it or not.
Good for Iran.
nikimcbee
07-24-12, 11:24 AM
If they have them, where did they get them from?
TLAM Strike
07-24-12, 11:37 AM
If they have them, where did they get them from?
As I've said before you can basically walk down to the local supermarket and buy a chemical weapon.
For a nation with any kind of industry, the equipment and ingredients are already there; its simply a matter of having the intent to make them. You don't need secret labs in the back of semis.
Other than that, the same place they got their nuclear program (the one currently known as that big hole in the ground in al Kibar).
nikimcbee
07-24-12, 11:53 AM
As I've said before you can basically walk down to the local supermarket and buy a chemical weapon.
For a nation with any kind of industry, the equipment and ingredients are already there; its simply a matter of having the intent to make them. You don't need secret labs in the back of semis.
Other than that, the same place they got their nuclear program (the one currently known as that big hole in the ground in al Kibar).
I'll laugh if it said "made in Iraq."
I'll laugh if it said "made in Iraq."
Iraq was disarmed by UN......:haha:
Jimbuna
07-24-12, 12:43 PM
Iraq was disarmed by UN......:haha:
Yeah that's right :yep:
Hold on a minute :hmm2:
Skybird
07-24-12, 03:30 PM
If they have them, where did they get them from?
Carrier systems were build with assistance from North Korea and Iran, maybe also Russia. Chemical agents are produced by themselves in probbaly 3 or 4 facilities, they are assumed to have VX, Sarin and Tabun. A good ammount of their stock is assumed to derive from Saddam'S arsenal that he got rid of some years before the war of '03.
Dual-use technology probably also comes from some Western distributors. German, French, British, Italian and Amerian companies are not shy regarding selling dual-use technology.
TLAM Strike
07-24-12, 05:57 PM
Carrier systems were build with assistance from North Korea and Iran, maybe also Russia.
Do doubt they got some of their missile know how from the Iraqis who in turn got it from (in addition to those you named) the Egyptians, Libyans, and Argentinians.
Earlier today I saw the news and the commentator said
"The syrians have said that they will not use it against it's own people, only against foreign intervetion in the conflict. So they can use it and say that it was against foreign group of terrorist"
(can't remember the exact frame, but it was something like that)
Markus
Jimbuna
07-25-12, 06:37 AM
My guess is they meant Turkey and Israel.
Skybird
07-25-12, 06:57 AM
I think we all know what to thinkl of their claism theyx would not use chemicals against "their own people".
And the Assads belongs to a minority ethnicity. Are the others "their people", too?
Technically, even the rebels from Syrian origin (no foreigners) can be seen as "their people", too, so...
That claim means nothing, we should know that for sure.
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