Syria Conspiracy Theories Flourish, at Both Ends of the Spectrum

link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/us/politics/factcheck-syria-strike-conspiracy-theories.html

A satellite image showed the northwest side of the Shayrat air base in Syria on Friday after a United States strike with Tomahawk missiles. Credit Digital Globe, via Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s order for a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base, which has alienated some of his supporters, has fueled speculation of hidden motives and hoaxes.

Websites like Infowars are calling the chemical attack that drew United States fire a “false flag” operation, while liberal blogs have pointed to the strike as evidence of “wag the dog” diversion tactics.

Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia group, said he was not “buying any of them” and pointed out that the theories conveniently fit preconceived notions and motives, but don’t really make sense.

Here’s an assessment of some of them.

Information Clearing House argued that President Bashar al-Assad had no reason to use chemical weapons

“With the Syrian Army and its allies in a comfortable position in Syria, making advances across the country, and recovering lost points in rural Hama, why would they now resort to using chemical weapons in Nusra Front-occupied Idlib? It is a very simple question with no clear answer.”

THIS IS MISLEADING. There are numerous reasons Mr. Assad’s forces would conduct a chemical attack.

The attack is consistent with Mr. Assad’s calculated strategy of attempting to drive out the civilian population in rebel strongholds through bombing neighborhoods and civilian targets, The Times’s Anne Barnard reported.

Mr. Assad also may have felt emboldened after Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and Nikki R. Haley, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that driving him from power was not a priority.

So using sarin gas “made a lot of sense after public signals that the U.S. might not be seeking to oust him,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You don’t need to kill a lot of people, but you can frighten a lot of people.”

We Are Change claimed anti-Assad forces had advance knowledge of the sarin attack.

“A Syrian reporter for Gulf-based Orient TV tweeted about the attack 24 hours before it took place.”

FALSE. Infowars and others pointed to social media posts from Feras Karam, a reporter for Orient News, as evidence of a hoax. But Mr. Karam was referring to a different attack.

“Tomorrow is the launch of a media campaign to cover the intensity of the airstrikes on the countryside of #Hama and use of #poison_chlorine against civilians,” Mr. Karam wrote on Facebook and Twitter on April 3.

Sarin gas hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun early on the morning of April 4 in the rebel-held Idlib Province. That’s about 36 kilometers north of Hama, which Mr. Karam alleged had been targeted by chlorine a day earlier.

Chlorine attacks, as The Times has reported, are less deadly and have been almost routine in Syria.

Infowars claimed that the White Helmets were the real culprits.

“The White Helmets, an Al Qaeda affiliated group funded by George Soros and the British government, have reportedly staged another chemical weapon attack on civilians in the Syrian city of Khan Shaykhun to lay blame on the Syrian government.”

NO EVIDENCE. The White Helmets are volunteers that act as emergency medical workers in Syria. Allegations about their ties to terrorists and complicity in the chemical attack are unproven.

The websites offer no evidence for their claim that the White Helmets are “Al Qaeda affiliated” beyond implying that it cannot be a coincidence that 250 people in Hama were kidnapped by Al Qaeda a week before the sarin attack, “which is the same number as the current body count of wounded and killed civilians.”

The Times could not locate reports from credible media sources about the alleged recent kidnapping, and the 250 figure is unsubstantiated as well. Initial estimates for the death toll ranged from dozens to as many as 100 in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Unicef said 546 people were injured, “among them many children.”

Mr. Assad himself accused the White Helmets of being “Al Qaeda members” without evidence in an interview in March with RT, a news outlet funded by the Russian government. (RT and Sputnik News regularly link the nongovernment organization to different terrorist groups.)

Given Russia’s support of Mr. Assad, casting doubt on the White Helmets is “basic counterinsurgency in certainly ruthless terms,” Mr. Cordesman said. “If you can alter the flow of aid, you can depopulate the area and essentially gain control of territory.”

The websites also questioned why White Helmets appeared to be “unaffected” even though some had treated victims without wearing gloves. But some rescue workers did grow ill and collapsed from exposure.

Another theory posited by the websites suggested that Mr. Assad couldn’t have been capable of launching the attack because President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry declared Syria’s stockpile eliminated in 2014, while opposition forces still had chemical weapons.

Obama administration officials have maintained that Mr. Assad might have hidden a small supply. It’s also possible that Syrian government manufactured new weapons. Suggestions that rebel forces were behind the attack are dubious, Mr. Cordesman said, because of the nature of sarin.

“You don’t suddenly bomb a sarin gas deposit and have sarin gas emerge,” he said. “It isn’t armed. The rebels couldn’t have been stockpiling in secret. It’s really difficult to assemble.”

Salon questioned Mr. Trump’s giving Russia advance notice of the airstrike.

“Donald Trump, who’s totally not Vladimir Putin’s puppet, warned Russia before airstrikes on Syria.”

THIS NEEDS CONTEXT. The Pentagon said Russian forces were notified in advance of the strike to minimize the risk to Syrian or Russian soldiers. But there are explanations other than collusion.

The United States has been engaging in an air war against Islamic State fighters in Syria, where Russian and Syrian forces also operate. Even with advance notice, the airstrike has threatened cooperation, or rather lack of interference, and strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia.

Not warning the Russians would have forced a much more severe response from Moscow and would have been “completely irresponsible,” Mr. Bremmer said.

“It’s certainly true that Trump doesn’t want the level of scrutiny on the Russia ties, but he does want a better relationship,” Mr. Bremmer said. “It’s very clear that the Russians are very unhappy so the idea that there’s coordination is ludicrous.”

The Palmer Report pointed to the strike’s limited efficacy.

“Donald Trump gets defensive about Syria runways, tacitly admitting he was doing Russia’s bidding.”

NO EVIDENCE. The 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles were aimed at Syrian fighter jets and aircraft shelters at Shayrat airfield, but did leave the runways intact. Suggestions that the United States spared the airstrips because of collusion are, again, unproven.

Mr. Bremmer said that he was surprised the United States didn’t seek to degrade the base further, but emphasized that there was “zero evidence” the limited strike was a facade.

Being in the fact-gathering stage maybe what we’re left with, when all is said and done. Again, I doubt the truth will come out for a long, long time.

I am not buying this. The truth is already out…some people are trying to obscure it. Not sure why anyone would want to contest that…nothing is gained either way by pretending the Syrian and Russian versions (which are actually different) make any sense.

(BTW I am also not buying the latest Trump administration escalation on this which claims the Russians knew in advance the attack was coming. The most reasonable take on this to me is that Assad just went back on his agreement from 2013 to not use chemical weapons again–an agreement that involved both the USA and Russia.)

What’s surprising in the 2010s, which is very different from the run-up to the Iraq war, is that some leftie blogger types are buying into the Russian and Syrian routines on this.

If you read closely about the 2013 chemical attack, the one that led to massive international pressure and even had Assad publicly declaring he would abandon chemical weapons programs, the military capacity to track Syrian communications and flights is very sophisticated. Which, again, is why the Russian cover story had to at least include the facts that there were Syrian planes involved AND that there was an actual chemical attack. (Assad’;s “denial” didn’t even do that much.)

To me this “it’s not clear” motif has about the same degree of minor annoyance as did having to debate serious people who bought into Russian trolling and were actually trying to claim that Hillary had a minor campaign person assassinated.

It’s a new factor in discussing issues.

It was far easier to pull up info back in the run-up to war in Iraq, when the left wasn’t divided by bad conspiracy theories.

Just a man’s opinion.

But I have shut down sources and took them off of bookmarks that show any hint of just parroting the Russian views on Syria. They do not help. They are part of the problem.

I will keep posting these cause, Duty.

But he’s answering questions from kindergartners.

And they are kindergarten answers.

Meaning: the questions and answers are all basic. Well-informed posters already know more.

TSRF wrote:

Everyone knows the moon is made of cheese.

You know, and this is just me, but, that account does not strike me as being scientifically credible or up to date.

You know, just, IMHO.

.

from Rams, NFL Mock Draft 2017: Predicting picks in rounds 1-7

Howard Balzer, NFLDraftScout.com

http://www.upi.com/Sports_News/NFL/2017/04/14/Los-Angeles-Rams-NFL-Mock-Draft-2017-Predicting-picks-in-rounds-1-7/1611492181542/

…

MOCK DRAFT

Below is a list of every pick for the Rams in the 2017 NFL Draft.

Round and overall pick number listed, along with player, position, school, height, weight and 40-yard dash time. (* – indicates compensatory pick)

2/37: Takk McKinley, DE/OLB, UCLA (6-2, 250, 4.59)

3/69: JuJu Smith-Schuster, WR, USC (6-1, 215, 4.54)

4/112: Tyler Orlosky, OC, West Virginia (6-3, 298, 5.37)

4/*141: Danny Isidora, OG, Miami (Fla.) (6-3, 306, 5.00)

5/149: Jadar Johnson, S, Clemson (6-0, 206, 4.60)

6/189: Nate Hairston, CB, Temple (6-0, 196, 4.52)

6/207: Tanner Vallejo, LB, Boise State (6-1, 228, 4.65)

7/234: Cethan Carter, TE, Nebraska (6-3, 241, 4.65)

New Rams OL Andrew Whitworth has left Cincinnati for the Rams and talks to John about his health, his career longevity and has a message for NFL Draft prospects.

Wildflecken wrote:

This is the deepest draft class in years. I think this class will exceed the norm by leaps and bounds and will put a significant number of players into the NFL who end up making it a living and signing second contracts. Teams seeking qb and offensive line talent will need to pull the trigger early when draft arrives, but nearly every other position is very rich in talent. When is the last time you seen a draft have two prospects who will in all likelihood contribute on both sides of the ball at the next level in Peppers and Jackson? For a team like the Rams who fielded a capable defense but are converting to a new defensive scheme this offseason, this draft alone could complete the transition and add the talent Phillips needs to take it to the elite level. A level that results in a championship similar to the 2013 Seahawks or 2015 Broncos.

McVay will groom and evaluate the wr’s added last offseason, in the draft and as UDFA’s, and give them an opportunity in 2017. Look for the remainder of the draft to address building the defense to Phillips liking.

Russia’s not Leaving: Syria is about old-Fashioned Sphere of Influence, not Oil

Juan Cole

https://www.juancole.com/2017/04/russias-fashioned-influence.html

Russia is not going to yield its sphere of influence in Syria to Donald Trump or anyone else. Russia has all but won the Syrian War as we speak. There is no longer any feasible pathway for the rebels to take the capital of Damascus. The non-ISIL groups have lost all major urban areas except for Ghouta near Damascus. They are bottled up there and in rural northern Idlib province, and likely the regime will overwhelm them in both places over the next year, with Russian air support. ISIL itself is on the verge of losing everything in Iraq and of being rolled up, over the next year or two, in Eastern Syria.
BBC Monitoring translated from Interfax for April 10,

“Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov . . . said . . . “The American side has thus demonstrated its complete unwillingness to cooperate on Syria in any form or take account of each others’ interests and concerns. . . The return to pseudo-attempts to settle [the Syrian conflict] in the spirit of reciting ‘Assad must go’ mantras cannot bring anyone closer to political settlement in Syria,” he said. Peskov was commenting on remarks by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who earlier called on Russia to distance itself from Assad.”
Source: Interfax news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1015 gmt 10 Apr 17

I think we should take Moscow seriously on this.
What can be said is that there are four major local forces in Syria: 1) the western urban regime stretching from Damascus to Latakia and Aleppo; 2) the fundamentalist rebels, whether moderate Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi Jihadis such as the Freemen of Syria or the Syrian Conquest Front; 3) The YPG leftist Kurds in the northeast and 4) ISIL.

Updated Control & Influence #Map #Syria 15 April 2017 by #Data Shows % of Gains & Loses in the last 15 Days PDF: https://t.co/y4h9tls02P pic.twitter.com/6RsF5oD4Tk

— Nawar Oliver (@Nawaroliver) April 1, 2017

The West and Northwest are a Russian sphere of influence, and the Bashar al-Assad regime and the Russians have, as I said, all but defeated the fundamentalist rebels there. (There are non-fundamentalist rebels, especially in Ghouta, but they frankly have never amounted to anything on the battlefield). The regime’s occasional use of poison gas is intended as a force multiplier, since at a low 50,000 or so men under arms they can barely control the country, much less take back big swathes of territory, even with intensive Russian air support. The other force multiplier is total war tactics such as starving out civilian populations among whom guerrilla groups hide out, or deliberately hitting hospitals and other essential service-providers in rebel areas. While the regime may become more cautious about the use of gas, it may simply double down on indiscriminate bombing.
A caution: on the map above, the reddish areas under regime control look geographically small. They actually contain about 75 percent of the population.
The east is an American sphere of influence, where the US is backing leftist Kurds to take on ISIL.
There is also a small strip of land north of Aleppo that is a Turkish sphere of influence, where fundamentalist rebels are still operating, but it doesn’t amount to much and Turkey backed off challenging either Russia or the US-Kurdish alliance in any frontal way.
The Syrian conflict is a challenge to economic theories of imperialism, whether that of J. A. Hobson or that of Vladimir Lenin. It is not about markets. It is not about monopoly capital. It is not about oil or hydrocarbon resources. It is not about pipelines. Other Middle East conflicts have taken place that could be explained that way. But today’s Syria isn’t such a case.
There simply is not much money to be made in Syria. Before the war it had a small population of 22 million. Its gross domestic product of $77 bn is less than that of the island of Puerto Rico and less than half that of Peru, one of the poorer countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Syria was pumping about 400,000 barrels a day of petroleum, which is next to nothing. One fracked field in North Dakota does that. Saudi Arabia does 10 mn b/d and Iraq does 3. Nor is the conflict about pipelines. Nowadays both oil and liquefied natural gas can be inexpensively exported by supertanker and while a pipeline might be nice it wouldn’t be worth fighting a war over.
Syria is important to Russia because
1. It is near to Russia and Chechen fundamentalist rebels are operating there in alliance with al-Qaeda and with Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). It is unacceptable to Russia for the fundamentalist rebels to win and sweep into Damascus, since this development would potentially destabilize the Russian Caucasus.
2. Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, is a neo-nationalist who feels as though Russia got a raw deal from the US and NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia was reduced to a weak joke, and lost the spheres of influence that characterize a Great Power. It has lost even nearby assets such as the Ukraine. It lost Libya. Syria was a place where Putin could show the flag and bring home some victories.
Syria on the other hand is not important to the US. Syria’s alliance with Iran makes it inconvenient for both of the major US allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel. But the Israeli security establishment is divided about whether it is better to leave al-Assad in power or to welcome the Sunni fundamentalists into Damascus in order to weaken the Shiite Hizbullah in Lebanon. After all, an al-Qaeda state next door would be much worse than a little isolated militia like Hizbullah. Saudi Arabia has no such reservations, but its proxies in Syria have mostly been defeated and it can’t do anything more there except play spoiler and encourage what will amount, after the war is over, to mere terrorism. Aside from the Iran consideration, the US has no stake in Syria except to deprive Daesh/ ISIL of a base there from which to attack Europe. But the US cannot defeat ISIL without de facto strengthening the al-Assad regime.
All this is why Russia will remain in Syria and will have most of it as its sphere of influence. Russia has clear motivations and clear goals there, a strong ally with most of the population under its control, and a practical plan for accomplishing them, which has worked well if sanguinarily so far.
In contrast, the US has no obvious motivation to be in Syria except fighting Daesh. Its policies are therefore muddled. It is damaging its relationship with a big important country, Turkey (pop. 78 mn., GDP $800 bn), by its alliance with the small PYD Syrian Kurdish population of some 2 million, for the instrumental purpose of rolling up Daesh. Maybe the military-industrial complex in the US would like a war just to make some money, and maybe the Neoconservatives would like a war to contain Iran. But neither of them is likely to be able to dictate to Trump, who likely hasn’t given up on better relations with Putin and doesn’t need either of those groups to be reelected.
My guess is that the Tomahawk strikes were impulsive and a one-off. The Russian-dominated status quo is not significantly affected, and there isn’t an early prospect of it so being.

wv wrote:

Cole said: “The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army in Idlib is an atrocity..”

But that has not been proven. Where is the clear and convincing evidence that the Syrian Army used chemical weapons?

The Russians and Assad say they didnt do it. The US says Assad did it. Where’s the proof?

w
v

No, it;s the Russians that deny it. “Has not been proven” is the Russian line. I actually published within all that a local independent middle eastern news source that accepts the line that it was syria. I’ve been insisting on this point: take views from those who are echoing the Russians on this, and it’s no help…it actually just muddies things.

Cole is without equal the leading american commentator on the region. I would take his view over anyone who is just parroting the Russians—any day.

Cole was a godsend of neutral deep commentary and reporting when I was looking at sources on the run up to the iraq war.

In 3 months, Trump has Charged into 4 Mideast Wars, to no Avail

Juan Cole

https://www.juancole.com/2017/04/months-charged-mideast.html

In his less than three months in office, Donald Trump has escalated four wars, and all of his escalations have been failures.
To be fair, Trump inherited all 4 wars from Barack Obama– Afghanistan, Iraq v. ISIL, Leftist Kurds v ISIL in Syria, and targeting support and tactical advice to Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
Trump campaigned on reducing such foreign entanglements and focusing on the US and its needs. But in office he has declined to rethink any of these commitments and indeed has escalated in each theater.
Trump’s first escalation was in Yemen, in late January. He sent in a team of navy Seals to attack an alleged al-Qaeda compound. But the man he was targeting had switched sides and was supporting the Yemeni government. The raid produced no useful intelligence and the target disappeared. A navy Seal was killed along with some 30 civilians, including children. The raid did not further the Saudi war aim of defeating the Houthi militia– it was aimed at al-Qaeda in Yemen, which has taken advantage of the Saudi intervention to grab territory.
In Iraq in late March, once Trump came in, the restrictive rules of operation for the military insisted on by Obama were loosened by the US miltitary. A bombing by a US aircraft caused the collapse of a civilian apartment complex, killing at least 200 innocent civilians.
In Syria’s Northeastern Front, Trump doubled the number of US special ops troops embeded with the leftist Kurdish militia, the YPG. These forces are intended to attack ISIL in its Syrian capital, Raqqa, but despite promises by Trump, no such concerted new campaign has begun. Then when it appeared last week that the Syrian regime used poison gas in its struggle against the al-Qaeda affiliate and its allies in the Northwestern Front at Idlib, Trump dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on a small airbase. No significant damage was done and Syria was flying missions again the next day.
On Thursday, Trump hit with an 1100 ton bomb some caves in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, said to be being used by Taliban rebels who had joined ISIL. The US has lost 1/3 of Afghanistan to fundamentalist rebels, mostly Taliban, in a 16-year war that is going worse now than than at any time since spring, 2002. There is no prospect of defeating guerrillas with air power, no matter how massive. The US carpet-bombed Vietnam and still lost. The desperation of the Trump administration is demonstrated by the use of old Saddam Hussein hyperbole, calling the missile ‘The Mother of all Bombs.’ Trump is actually translating his propaganda directly from Dictator Arabic! Saddam had called the Gulf War ‘the Mother of all Battles’ (Umm al-Ma’arik), though this was a literal press translation. The phrase means the ‘essence of all battles.’ Saddam’s hyperbole did not serve him well.
What all four Trump interventions in his ongoing US wars in the Middle East have in common is that they were splashy, produced headlines for a day, and altered the course of the conflict not a jot or a tittle.
Trump is gradually inducting his Four Wars into his Reality-Show universe, where everything is done for ratings and just for show.

Washington’s Supreme Hypocrisy on Chemical Weapons and Civilian Deaths

Juan Cole

https://www.juancole.com/2017/04/washingtons-hypocrisy-chemical.html

The use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army in Idlib is an atrocity and the pictures of dead children tug at the heart. But the outrage of American politicians inside the beltway about it draws on the myths of American exceptionalism and Alzheimer’s of the political memory. It is also very suspicious in that the loudest voices of sympathy are the ones closest to the US military industrial complex, which has been regretting the missed opportunity of a Syria War.
If Trump and his circle are so tenderhearted, why did they propose, on taking office, permanently banning Syrian refugees from the United States? If it weren’t for some feisty Federal court judges, the Syrian refugee ban would be in effect. How sympathetic can you be if you don’t even want to give children asylum from these heinous atrocities?
Then, why is how children are killed in war more important than that they are killed? The most conservative estimate for deaths in the Syrian Civil War is some 300,000, and you figure that although many of those are fighting men, some large proportion (33%?) are innocent noncombatants, including tens of thousands of children. Rebel groups have also killed tens of thousands of people, including innocent civilians, though the regime has been more deadly because better-armed. Why was it all right for the regime to use indiscriminate bombing and barrel bombs on civilian neighborhoods, but if they kill some 80 people with gas all of a sudden the Beltway Bandits want to Send in Trump?
And by the way, all the time the US was occupying Iraq, 2003-2011, it was intensively bombing civilian neighborhoods to get at Iraqi militias. It certainly killed thousands of innocent civilians this way, including children. I can remember just one Saturday afternoon in 2004, the US bombed Amara over and over again to get at the Shiite Mahdi Army militia. The Agence France Presse had a stringer on the ground who reported 84 deaths. They weren’t all combatants. The US media refused to run the AFP report.
All this isn’t new. The US has long had a doctrine that it is all right to inflict large civilian casualties with the aim of limited troop casualties. The United States used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after which there were thousands and thousands of dead children. Some were carbonized so quickly that nothing was left of them but shadows on the wall. Little children. The US security elite has never apologized for this war crime and continues to menace other nations with this kind of indiscriminate and unspeakable violence every time it announces that “all options are on the table.”
As for chemical weapons, the US has studiedly avoided signing unreservedly the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning chemical weapons use. (It says it will use chem if others do, which means it could use chem in Syria now).
The Reagan administration shamefully ran interference for six years as Saddam Hussein of Iraq systematically deployed chemical weapons against Iranian troops at the front. Everyone knew this was going on. After then Searle CEO Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in 1983 and famously shook Saddam’s hand, George Schultz’s State Department complained about Saddam’s chem, provoking angry puzzlement in Baghdad. Did Reagan want a new ally against Khomeini’s Iran, or not? Reagan had State back down. And, indeed, when Iran appealed to the United Nations Security Council to condemn what Iraq was doing, the Reagan administration maneuvered at the UN to make sure that Iran’s case was not taken up.
I saw an Iranian survivor interviewed. He said he wished he had been killed instead. His lungs had been permanently scarred by mustard gas, and every breath he took was pure torture. Imagine how many breaths a person draws every day.
Emboldened by Reagan’s running cover for him at the UN, Saddam went on to have his relative “Chemical Ali” al-Tikriti use sarin gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Again, lots of little children were among the thousands dead. Some were walking to school and their little hands were still grasping lunch pails. George H. W. Bush was vice president and must have been in the loop. His son, W., later invaded Iraq and gave as one of his pretexts that Saddam had used ‘weapons of mass destruction’ on ‘his own people.’
Iraq used chemical weapons for the same reason that the Syrian army does. They are deployed to level the playing field in the face of superior manpower on the other side. Saddam Hussein had a country of 16 million and invaded a country of some 40 million. US military doctrine of the time was you should only invade at a ratio of 3 to 1. So Saddam would have needed a country of 120 million to invade Iran. Needless to say, he lost the war very badly after an initial lightning invasion, since Iran could always over time raise a much bigger army than Saddam could. Hence the use of mustard gas and sarin gas on Iranian troops at the front.
Some Syrian military units have a chem team in case they face being overwhelmed by a more numerous enemy. The Syrian army was 300,000 before the war. It is at most 50,000 now. That number is not sufficient to control the whole country, though with the help of the Lebanese Hizbullah and Iraqi militias and some Afghans dragooned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, plus vigorous Russian air support, they have been able to fight off the rebels and to take most urban areas. The small number of troops means that when they fight in a rebel-held territory like Idlib Province, they are tempted to deploy chemical weapons to offset their small numbers.
But it is indiscriminate fire and reckless disregard for innocent life that is the war crime here, and indeed a repeated pattern of war crimes is considered a crime against humanity.
By the way, Russian bombing has often been indiscriminate, but somehow Moscow has skated on war crimes accusations growing out of its heavy-handed role in Syria.
As for those decrying Obama inaction they need to, like, read the news sometime. For the past several years the US has intervened in Syria in two ways. President Obama used the Saudis to deliver money and weaponry to some 40 “vetted” groups supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, which is certified as having no ties to al-Qaeda or international extremism. Except that several of these groups have in fact formed battlefield alliances with al-Qaeda in Syria (was Jabhat al-Nusra, now Jabhat Fateh Sham or the Syrian Conquest Front).
Why in the world the US government should have backed groups like the Saudi favorite Army of Islam, which wanted to oppress or kill non-Sunnis baffles me. The rebel groups committed their own massacres of civilians.
The other US intervention has been thousands of bombing raids against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria’s far east.
Neither of these interventions has been effective to date, and both certainly have raised the death toll in the Civil War, including the civilian death toll.
Trump can’t stop Syria from using poison gas by bombing Damascus. Since he’s such a good buddy of Russian president Vladimir Putin, maybe he could pressure Putin to have Bashar al-Assad cut it out.
But that somehow the Syria situation can be made better if only Donald J. Trump would stick his fingers into it is a wildly implausible premise.

=======

===

===

link: http://aranews.net/2017/04/chemical-attack-kills-dozens-northern-syria/

Chemical attack kills dozens in northern Syria

April 4, 2017 Syria
104Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)104Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)Click to print (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
syria-gas-attack-2-1491307161.jpg
Syrian boy injured during a suspected regime-led chemical attack being moved to a hospital in Idlib. Activists

Read More

Assad: We support whoever wants to liberate Raqqa from terrorists

Syrian Democratic Forces launch fourth phase of anti-ISIS Raqqa campaign

18 SDF fighters killed by misdirected coalition airstrike on Raqqa frontline

US-led coalition says no timeline for Raqqa operation, progress continues to isolate ISIS’ de facto capital

Syria’s Assad: Idlib chemical attack ‘fabrication’

Syrian Kurds respond to Turkey’s offensive on Afrin, bomb army base
Tags
Assad regimeBashar al-Assadchemical agentschemical attackchemical weaponsIdlibSNCSyriaSyrian oppositionSyrian regimevictims
At least 58 people, including 11 children, died in a suspected gas attack in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, local sources reported on Tuesday.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), people choked or fainted after the attack, while some were seen foaming at the mouth.

The SOHR said it had received the reports from medics on the ground in the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Hours later, a small field hospital in the region was struck and destroyed, according to a civil defence worker in the area.

The Syrian National Coalition (SNC), the main opposition group, said planes from President Bashar al Assad’s military carried out the airstrikes.

It was not immediately clear if the deaths had been caused by the chemical weapons or injuries sustained in the airstrikes.

Videos purporting to show the aftermath circulated on social media.

One showed the bodies of several young children being covered with a blanket, while another showed men lifting a body into the back of a truck.

In a number of videos, medics could be seen helping people who appeared to have breathing difficulties.

Rescue workers were pictured hosing down children.

More than 60 people were reportedly injured in the airstrikes.

“At 18 cases had been taken to a hospital in Sarmin town. Because of the number of wounded, they have been distributed around in rural Idlib,” local media activist Mohammed Hassoun said.

“They were unconscious, they had seizures and when oxygen was administered, they bled from the nose and mouth.”

Russia’s defence ministry said it had not carried out any airstrikes in the area.

The Syrian government did not immediately comment on the allegations, but last week said claims the government was using chemical weapons were “devoid of truth”.

The SNC called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council, blaming the airstrikes on the “regime of the criminal Bashar”.

It urged the UN to “open an immediate investigation and take the necessary measures to ensure the officials, perpetrators and supporters are held accountable”.

“Failure to do so will be understood as a message of blessing to the regime for its actions,” it added.

France later also said that it wanted an emergency Security Council meeting.

“The perpetrators must be held accountable. We need to address this issue at the Security Council, as soon as possible,” Alexis Lamek, Deputy Permanent Representative of France to the UN, said.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said: “This bears all the hallmarks of an attack by the regime, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons.”

“If this is shown to be the work of the regime, it is further evidence of the atrocities perpetrated against the Syrian people over six years of appalling conflict,” Johnson said.

Idlib province is almost entirely controlled by the Syrian opposition and is home to 900,000 people displaced from other areas by the 6-year-old war.