[QUOTE=kladner;456354]One suggestion that I have heard floating around is that an air strike blew up a sarin stockpile in a rebel area. It opens up the possibilities if all one needs is high explosives to release the gas.[/QUOTE]

I have my doubts about Assad using Sarin. High explosives and conventional arms seem to have been his main weapons of choice, with, it seems, the occasional dash of chlorine, which is a whole lot easier to come by, and to handle, than nerve agents.

Speaking of things that don't make sense, it also makes no sense to store or stockpile a weapon you can't or won't use. Because I haven't heard of a single case in which [name your terrorist group] has even been accused of having used any of the nerve agents they've supposedly been stockpiling, against the Assad regime or anybody else. The only people hurt or killed by the stuff always seem to be civilians in "rebel-held areas." The only chemical agents I've heard about terrorists using are chorine and mustard agent.

It's not clear to me how they could even hope to deploy the stuff. They don't have aircraft, heavy artillery, or any suitable munitions. I haven't heard of any attempts to use the stuff in a suicide car or truck attack, or a drone attack.

It's also not clear to me it was Sarin. The symptoms I've seen reported are of organophosphate poisoning. There are a lot of things that could cause that, such as organophosphate insecticides, which are a lot easier to come by, and have a lot longer shelf life, than Sarin. They could, of course, also be stockpiled for use as WMDs. But Sarin is a "binary agent" -- two precursors (which themselves are not easy to produce) are combined to produce the Sarin -- just before deployment, because once produced, the stuff breaks down quickly. And it wouldn't make sense to store the precursors close to each other, precisely because they might combine if the place was bombed. And then -- never mind civilian casualties -- what would that do to salvage operations? If you want to stage a bombing scene to look like a chemical attack, all it would take would be a Brave Volunteer to mix bits of the two chemicals together in a fragile container at the scene, and drop it.

And yet another thing that makes no sense: Bashar Al-Assad has been bombing and choking his people with chlorine for years now, during most of which Il Duce has been maintaining that it isn't our problem. Now, all of a sudden, he turns on a dime and gives nine cents change, and orders the bombing of one of Assad's air fields. Apparently unmoved by recurring images of the battered, bloody, dust-caked bodies of victims, young and old, of bombing strikes, our Great Leader became a quivering blob of Jell-O at the sight of the dying or lifeless, but apparently uninjured, bodies of small children.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;456418]Speaking of things that don't make sense, it also makes no sense to store or stockpile a weapon you can't or won't use.[/QUOTE]Makes perfect sense to me. A number of outfits have stockpiled nuclear weapons, precisely one of which have used them and that one not for over 70 years.

[url=www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/trumps-syria-attack-and-our-abject-media/]Trump's Syria Attack and Our Abject Media[/url] | The American Conservative

And Counterpunch's Jeffrey St. Clair opines at length on the topic in his most recent Friday [url=http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/07/roaming-charges-metaphysical-graffiti/]Roaming Charges[/url] column installment:
[quote]Trump’s decision to hit a Syrian government facility was an act of stunning rashness, made before any independent investigation into the chemical weapons attack or official determination of who was responsible–and, of course, without international or congressional authorization. It is perhaps most comparable to Bill Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, an act which helped to spawn two decades of endless wars. With no evidence to support him, Clinton claimed that the facility was a chemical weapons factory for Al Qaeda. Like Clinton, Trump’s poll numbers were in the toilet when he gave the orders to strike. Thus do war crimes feed on war crimes.
...
+ The search for clean hands: When it comes to chemical weapons let us recall that in the war to eliminate Saddam’s mythical WMDs, the US was the first to use chemical weapons in its brutal assault on Fallujah. A type of warfare replicated many times by our chief ally in the region, Israel.

+ Then there are the Brits. Let us recall Winston Churchill’s deranged view on the use of chemical weapons against Iraqi revolutionaries in 1920, five years after the first major bombardment of poison bomb in World War One, when the Germans dropped chlorine weapons on French, British and Canadian troops at the Second Battle of Ypres. “I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes. It would spread a lively terror.”[/quote]

How Media Bias Fuels Syrian Escalation
 

This story really brought me down. It reports that even Democracy Now! has drunk the "Assad did it!" Koolaid. As far as I have been able to find out, the professional opinion has stated "symptoms of organo-phosphate poisoning." While this could include Sarin, there are many other, non-militarized chemicals which could produce similar symptoms. Add to this uncertainty, photos of White Helmet rescue workers handling supposed sarin victims bare-handed. This would not be the case if nerve gas were involved. I have seen it stated that exposure to military-grade sarin is invariably fatal.

It seems that one of the more likely explanations right now is that an air strike on an al Qaeda storage depot dispersed "something" which may have led to the symptoms and deaths. Another, much uglier suggestion is that Al Qaeda, or some similar organization released "something" to create an incident which would get Western powers to attack the Syrian government. However, without analysis of residues, we can only speculate if such a substance was a genuine, if crude version of sarin, or industrial grade agricultural insecticide (EDIT: ...which are much cheaper, more available, and have much longer shelf life.) You might say that the insecticide is just a version of nerve gas-style neurotoxin labeled for use on insects instead of humans.

I am horrified and appalled at the herd mentality: the willingness to join a stampede based on assumptions and tainted sources of information.

[URL]https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/10/how-media-bias-fuels-syrian-escalation/[/URL]
[QUOTE]
The mainstream U.S. media now reports as “flat-fact” the Syrian government’s guilt in the April 4 chemical weapons incident, but the real facts are less clear and some point in the opposite direction, says Rick Sterling.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]Historian and journalist Stephen Kinzer has[URL="https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/18/the-media-are-misleading-public-syria/8YB75otYirPzUCnlwaVtcK/story.html"] said[/URL], “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press.”This past week’s coverage of the April 4 chemical-weapons incident in the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun will only add to that dubious legacy.

Across the mainstream U.S. news media, there was almost no skepticism shown and virtually no differences of opinion allowed. Within hours, the rush to judgment that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was guilty had solidified into a full-scale groupthink.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]The New York Times, for its first-day lead story entitled “[URL="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/middleeast/syria-gas-attack.html"]Worst Chemical Attack in Years in Syria; U.S. Blames Assad,”[/URL] turned to national security correspondent Michael Gordon, who somehow remains a “respected” journalist despite his influential role in promoting the WMD myth that helped justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In this instance, Gordon and co-author Anne Barnard presented the case against the Syrian government pretty much as you might expect, announcing Assad’s conviction [URL="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/05/another-dangerous-rush-to-judgment-in-syria/"]even before there was any time[/URL] for even a cursory investigation.

In reference to the 2013 sarin case, they also pronounced that [B] “American intelligence agencies concluded” the 2013 attack was carried out by the Syrian government, but that too was false.[/B] The intelligence agencies did NOT agree with the Obama administration’s politically driven claims and that forced the White House to come up with a new genre of report, called a “government assessment” rather than the traditional “intelligence estimate.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;456535]I am horrified and appalled at the herd mentality: the willingness to join a stampede based on assumptions and tainted sources of information.[/QUOTE]

But this is where we find ourselves. How do we manage the situation (other than digging deep holes, or moving to Mars or Venus)?

As I wrote that I was being serious, but then I remembered a book about Men and Women... Never actually read the book, but it seems like if we don't figure this out, a divorce could be *really* expensive.

[QUOTE=chalsall;456537]But this is where we find ourselves. How do we manage the situation (other than digging deep holes, or moving to Mars or Venus)?
[/QUOTE]
I have no good answers. One can imagine what amounts to "miraculous-intervention-with-extreme-prejudice," but that is only fantasy. Besides, how many kingpins would have to be neutralized in such an event to really change anything?

We are stuck. How badly stuck is yet to be seen, but the portents are infelicitous, to say the least. Sorry that we might drag down the rest of you folks in our collapse. I wish it may turn out to be otherwise.

o [url=www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syria-chemical-attack-al-qaeda-played-donald-trump_us_58ea226fe4b058f0a02fca4d]Wag The Dog — How Al Qaeda Played Donald Trump And The American Media[/url] | Huffington Post, By former Iraq weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

o [url=www.alternet.org/media/five-top-papers-run-18-opinion-pieces-praising-syria-strikes-zero-are-critical-0]Five Top Papers Run 18 Opinion Pieces Praising Syria Strikes—Zero Are Critical[/url] | AlterNet.

o And a lovely display of [url=http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/09/politics/democratic-leaders-gabbard-syria/]warmongering bipartisanship[/url]:
[i]
"A pair of veteran leaders on the left, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden, called on Hawaiians to vote Rep. Tulsi Gabbard out of office after the Democrat questioned whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for last week’s chemical attack."
[/i]
Note the conflation of the so-called liberals - as represented by the nauseating Dem establishment - and "the left" by CNN. How much more neocon right-wing can one be than described by the quote? Oh, that's right, one can run around wearing oh-so-adorable pink "pussy hats" and turn liberal pet distraction-issues like "Loretta should get to use the men's room because even though she's equipped as a man she feels like a woman" into national crises while cheering the imperial pink-misting of non-white folks of all genders and predilections - note the nondiscrimination! - abroad. As the mocking song lyrics go, "love me, love, I'm a liberal." (For more examples of liberal in(s)anity, do an in-page search for "Louise Mensch" [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/200pm-water-cooler-4102017.html]here[/url].}

Reports are coming in that a [URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39595989"]MOAB has been used today[/URL] in Afghanistan. Interesting, if true.

[QUOTE=xilman;456687]Reports are coming in that a [URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39595989"]MOAB has been used today[/URL] in Afghanistan. Interesting, if true.[/QUOTE]

like [url]https://ca.news.yahoo.com/pentagon-us-dropped-largest-non-165811698.html[/url]

[QUOTE=kladner;456535]It seems that one of the more likely explanations right now is that an air strike on an al Qaeda storage depot dispersed "something" which may have led to the symptoms and deaths. Another, much uglier suggestion is that Al Qaeda, or some similar organization released "something" to create an incident which would get Western powers to attack the Syrian government.[/QUOTE]
It's easy to concoct alternative ugly suggestions, predicated on the assumption that the Syrians actually dropped chemical munitions.

Why would Assad do that? Because Putin told him to. And why would Putin do such a thing? Because, his favorite US President is in a bit of a bind over Russian meddling in the election, along with campaign chairman Paul Manafort, now-former National security director Mike Flynn, foreign-policy advisor Carter Page, and God only knows how many other helpers seeming to be awfully cozy with Putin and company. So, an obvious counter to all this is to create a situation wherein Trump appears to get on the outs with Putin. Then his flacks could say, "See how tough the President [I]really[/I] is on Putin? [B][I]SEE?[/B][/I] Now, what's all this nonsense about Trump being Putin's, uh, [I]pawn[/I]?"

And that is exactly the sort of posturing we've been seeing the last few days. It could all be a Kabuki dance.

Of course, I don't have a scintilla of evidence of such cold-blooded scheming, but as to the attack itself, there is the testimony of the survivors on the receiving end of the air strike that it was a chemical attack. It's the kind of evidence that would be admissible in a court of law. I don't know on what grounds it is being dismissed our of hand.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;456692]And that is exactly the sort of posturing we've been seeing the last few days. It could all be a Kabuki dance.

Of course, I don't have a scintilla of evidence of such cold-blooded scheming, but as to the attack itself, there is the testimony of the survivors on the receiving end of the air strike that it was a chemical attack. It's the kind of evidence that would be admissible in a court of law. I don't know on what grounds it is being dismissed our of hand.[/QUOTE]

As to the former, the fact that the Russians were notified in advance and that surprisingly little meaningful damage was done to the airfield supports such a speculation.

As to the latter, how would someone not within spitting distance of the bomb drops be able to distinguish between a chemical munition being dropped and a conventional bomb hitting a storage bunker containing whatever chemical it was? Also, if you are referring to ground-level reports from either the White Helmets or a local 'moderate rebel' faction, neither of those sources is even close to disinterested here. From the Scott Ritter link I posted a few posts ago:
[quote]The alleged chemical weapons attack against Khan Sheikhoun was not a new reality; chemical attacks had been occurring inside Syria on a regular basis, despite the international effort to disarm Syria’s chemical weapons capability undertaken in 2013 that played a central role in forestalling American military action at that time. International investigations of these attacks produced mixed results, with some being attributed to the Syrian government (something the Syrian government vehemently denies), and the majority being attributed to anti-regime fighters, in particular those affiliated with Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Moreover, there exists a mixed provenance when it comes to chemical weapons usage inside Syria that would seem to foreclose any knee-jerk reaction that placed the blame for what happened at Khan Sheikhoun solely on the Syrian government void of any official investigation. Yet this is precisely what occurred. Some sort of chemical event took place in Khan Sheikhoun; what is very much in question is who is responsible for the release of the chemicals that caused the deaths of so many civilians.

No one disputes the fact that a Syrian air force SU-22 fighter-bomber conducted a bombing mission against a target in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017. The anti-regime activists in Khan Sheikhoun, however, have painted a narrative that has the Syrian air force dropping chemical bombs on a sleeping civilian population.

A critical piece of information that has largely escaped the reporting in the mainstream media is that Khan Sheikhoun is ground zero for the Islamic jihadists who have been at the center of the anti-Assad movement in Syria since 2011. Up until February 2017, Khan Sheikhoun was occupied by a pro-ISIS group known as Liwa al-Aqsa that was engaged in an oftentimes-violent struggle with its competitor organization, Al Nusra Front (which later morphed into Tahrir al-Sham, but under any name functioning as Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria) for resources and political influence among the local population.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed that Liwa al-Aqsa was using facilities in and around Khan Sheikhoun to manufacture crude chemical shells and landmines intended for ISIS forces fighting in Iraq. According to the Russians the Khan Sheikhoun chemical weapons facility was mirrored on similar sites uncovered by Russian and Syrian forces following the reoccupation of rebel-controlled areas of Aleppo.

In Aleppo, the Russians discovered crude weapons production laboratories that filled mortar shells and landmines with a mix of chlorine gas and white phosphorus; after a thorough forensic investigation was conducted by military specialists, the Russians turned over samples of these weapons, together with soil samples from areas struck by weapons produced in these laboratories, to investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for further evaluation.

Al Nusra has a long history of manufacturing and employing crude chemical weapons; the 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta made use of low-grade Sarin nerve agent locally synthesized, while attacks in and around Aleppo in 2016 made use of a chlorine/white phosphorous blend. If the Russians are correct, and the building bombed in Khan Sheikhoun on the morning of April 4, 2017 was producing and/or storing chemical weapons, the probability that viable agent and other toxic contaminants were dispersed into the surrounding neighborhood, and further disseminated by the prevailing wind, is high.

The counter-narrative offered by the Russians and Syrians, however, has been minimized, mocked and ignored by both the American media and the Trump administration. So, too, has the very illogic of the premise being put forward to answer the question of why President Assad would risk everything by using chemical weapons against a target of zero military value, at a time when the strategic balance of power had shifted strongly in his favor. Likewise, why would Russia, which had invested considerable political capital in the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons capability after 2013, stand by idly while the Syrian air force carried out such an attack, especially when their was such a heavy Russian military presence at the base in question at the time of the attack?[/quote]