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US Strikes Syrian Base With Over 50 Tomahawk Missiles (nbcnews.com)
mi writes: Two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea fired 59 Tomahawk missiles intended for a single target -- Shayrat Airfield in Homs province in western Syria, the Defense Department said. That's the airfield from which the United States believes the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired chemical weapons on Tuesday. There was no immediate word on casualties. U.S. officials told NBC News that people were not targeted and that aircraft and infrastructure at the site, including the runway, were hit. Slashdot reader Humbubba shares a similar report from Washington Post, adding that Thursday's strike was the "first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country's civil war began six years ago." The report also notes that the strike "dramatically expands U.S. military involvement in Syria and exposes the United States to heightened risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, both backing Assad in his attempt to crush his opposition."
So you would let Assad to keep bombing those poor people with sarin gas then? Get a clue you fucking moron.
45 had to do something. otherwise he'd be a limp male member anus.
This was the least expensive course.
War is expensive. avoiding it can be almost as expensive.
The US dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. 12,192 of them on Syria. - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-president-barack-obama-bomb-map-drone-wars-strikes-20000-pakistan-middle-east-afghanistan-a7534851.html
If you believe that Assad would initiate a gas attack while he is winning the war already means you must be gullible indeed.
This Syrian Civil War has been pretty nasty and relatively high intensity as modern civil wars go. Syria was a tribal society before the war and it's reverted to an even more primitive version of that tribalism now. Plenty of people over there are looking to settle scores of one kind or another and Syria was known to have both chemical weapons and planes to deliver them. After 5+ years of war, do you suppose that Assad maintains full control over the remnants of his military? Things are probably getting worn down and desperate. His men may be loyal up to a point, but surely many of them tire of this bloody war and want to see it end without ending them too. Maybe this attack was conducted by rouge officers or a faction looking to accelerate the conflict towards a settlement. Also, look at the list of long time dictators who've ended up dead recently: Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and now probably Bashar Al Assad of Syria too. The Russians want to maintain an Alawite puppet government in Syria, but they don't necessarily need Asad to be in charge of it and Putin has a way of ensuring the deaths of troublesome subordinates or erstwhile allies who've displeased him and fallen out of favor. It would be very convenient if, before any settlement of the Syrian Civil War, Bashar Al-Asad was to have an accident. It wouldn't surprise me to see the Russians arrange something like that and this most recent chemical attack, which comes after the Russians set up the original "deal" to have Syria hand over the chemical weapons, must surely embarrass them. I predict that Assad will wind up dead before this is all over, one way or another.
This is not what I said or meant and I'm pretty sure you know that.
Yes, this is what happened but the thing is once a state the size of Iraq collapses into quasi-anarchy the conflict does not stay confined to the borders of said ex-state. Without the collapse of Iraq there'd be no isis, and without isis the situation in Syria wouldn't be as messy as it is now. There might and probably still would be a civil war in Syria, but right now that war is made a lot more complicated and bloody by isis, which is opposed by both Assad, Russia and the US but the defeat of which is made more complicated because said 3 factions are also opposed to each other. The US is trying to get rid of isis and Assad, Assad/Russia is trying to get rid of Isis and the rebels, and the rebels are trying to get rid of Assad and isis. There is no easy solution to this mess, because if the US removes Assad from power it's likely that Syria will be in even worse shape than it is now, as it is unclear which faction outside Assad's regime has the skills and the resources to maintain control of Syria.
Backing Assad means backing the sole Russian ally in the region which the US cannot do, but this also means that realistically speaking getting the conflict in Syria contained is extremely difficult, much more so than it would be if this was a war with only 2 sides.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Historically such interventions have not been cheap or ended well. I suppose Trump thinks he is a genius who will win where others have failed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
FYI, it actually was a milk factory. Although Iraq did put up a big sign reading "Baby Milk Factory" after the bombing and other such things for PR purposes. Iraq actually was using milk byproducts for BW research, but at al-Hakam, not Abu Ghuraib.
CIA's own assessment.
You don't exist. Go away.
The devil is in the details, though. For instance, their point about all the Sarin stockpile of the Syrian government being in the form of binary weapons. Which would not yield active Sarin when accidentally hit during an airstrike.
Sure, that makes sense. Iff it was Sarin that was originally from Syrian government stocks that was hit. Could be, could perfectly well be.
But what if someone was storing non-binary Sarin (from whatever source) in a building there. Properly made non-binary Sarin has a shelf life of around 5 years, or so they say. Now anyone reasonably sane would prefer binary C-weapons for safety reasons - but they are harder to make than plain Sarin. Would it be inconceivable for rebels (who do have chemical engineers in their ranks) to make some, to provoke precisely the reaction we are seeing now?
Not sure - maybe the whole thing was a Syrian govt. airstrike after all. But there is a reason that military action normally requires international agreement. Say, a UN resolution, or something. Unilaterally striking under such unclear circumstances hardly helps pacifying the region.
Putin and the people working for him are very good at asking that sort of "question" and that is where this one comes from.
After Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, after Nayirah's testimony, after Afghanistan involvement in 9/11, after a lot of other "facts" that I'm not listing here (including alleged atrocities committed by Gaddafi), I'd say that sort of "question" is quite legitimate.
Agreed. I want the US to have nothing else to do with Syria. But using chemical weapons is simply too awful and too horrific to ignore. We can't stop parties from making or using the things, but we can damned well make sure there are painful consequences to doing so.
Why is it too awful? The death toll from this particular attack is a lot less than from many conventional airstrikes. The fact that people are somehow less accepting of chemicals than of just bombing people to death with explosives is insane.
Right. But since when was "we could not get approval to do it our way" a valid reason to do away with international law?
Mind you, this is not to say that under certain circumstances, it isn't permissible to say "fuck it", and just do what you have to do. But to me, it would not seem that all possible options had been exhausted before the use of deadly force.
Also, if the images that are emerging from the airbase are anything to go by, the airstrikes seem to have fallen well short of the alleged goal of totally disabling the base. Which, interestingly, might or might not have been the purpose all along, Trump-style. Do something to be able to say you tried, and intentionally fuck up so you don't hurt your friends too much.
Nobody else sells nearly as much. But interestingly the top 5 arms dealers in teh world are ALSO the top-5 members of the UN security council and the only countries with veto rights.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Wasn't he supposed to be a Russian sleeper agent, or something? Slashdot has been telling me so for months, now.
Right. But since when was "we could not get approval to do it our way" a valid reason to do away with international law?
The law itself looks more or less fine, but it is difficult to take it seriously, since the arbiter is not independent.
Mind you, this is not to say that under certain circumstances, it isn't permissible to say "fuck it", and just do what you have to do. But to me, it would not seem that all possible options had been exhausted before the use of deadly force.
I understand that neither of us is international policy expert, but given the situation as it is, what other options are there?
The US delivered top notch war material (F14s, Phoenix missiles, etc) to Iran in the 1970s back when the Shah was "our man in Iran". That was bleeding edge military hardware at that time. The Iran had the fourth largest army on the plant at that time (behind US, USSR and China).
And then in 1979, over night our man in Iran was kicked out and that Khomeini took over. And he was anything BUT our man. And we couldn't even simply roll over them for not playing nice because that Ayatollah now had top level military hardware, that would decidedly NOT have been a war like desert storm which was pretty much like a boxing match between Mohammad Ali and some 3-year old. That would have been a war that deserves that name.
Lucky for us we managed to convince a local warlord to do the dirty work for us and destroy that Ayatollah's top of the line equipment. We remember that as the first Gulf War.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I find this site rather funny. One day its "oh hes not doing anything to help (insert country thats fucked)" and than as soon as someone does somthing its "oh they shouldnt have done that because taxpayer this and death to military manufacturing that" these fucks just want is something to complain about because nobody in their real life listens to them or their ideas, rightfully so from what i have read. you cant expect a bunch of social disasters(slashdot) to come up with good political plans when most of them dont know shit outside of their "we dont need violence to live civilly" office space. Violence is the only thing guaranteed to curb stupidity on a mass scale. and its been proven in the past. sure you have to be smart with the violence. but you cant complain that nobody is helping and then complain when somebody tries to help.
News is already coming in that the terrorists have launched a big offensive towards the town of Al-Furqalas (known to Google Maps as Al-Furqlus). Surprise, surprise! Turns out Al-Furqalas is just 20 miles - half an hour by the local roads - from the Shayrat Military Airport.
What a lucky coincidence that the terrorists just happened to have all the men, vehicles, weapons, ammunition and supplies to launch a major offensive just when the USA took out the airbase.
And just 20 miles away too!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Look up what a Tomahawk cruise missile actually is. It is not a rocket. It is a self guided plane powered by a jet engine. A small unmanned Kamikaze that guides itself by looking at the ground and has a 1000 lbs. bomb built in.
For this strike, they used the newer type "E" flavor, which have two-way satellite communication features, rather than being strictly program, fire, forget.
That allows them to be re-targeted while in flight (and some of those flights can be lengthy) in reaction to revised intel about, say, the presence of someone or something in a spot they don't want to hit.
Interestingly, it took the two destroyers a good half an hour to get all of these in the air, so the early units actually loitered above the target, doing laps until the rest of them could catch up, and then all were used on their targets within just a couple of minutes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.