Slashdot Mirror
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."
Neat, more than $93M ($1.59M unit cost according to wikipedia) gone in a single (non war related) strike. /s
Thanks goodness he saved money by cutting the budget of EPA and NSF!
There's no proof he used any Sarin gas. He relinquished his chemical weapons in 2013 and John Kerry even praised him for it.
He relinquished his chemical weapons in 2013
Apparently he and Putin lied about it. I'm as shocked as you are.
I imagine the political pressure on Trump to do something to show he's not Putin's puppet has been pretty high. That's not a statement for or against this attack... but the strike may have served multiple purposes for the President.
#DeleteChrome
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The first gas attack in Ghouta in 2013 was confirmed by the UN to be initiated by the (US backed) rebels.
Incorrect. The UN report only confirms that chemical weapons had been used, but said nothing about responsibility. This is the conclusion from the UN report on Ghouta:
108. The United Nations Mission concludes that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic.
Ghouta, 21 August 2013
109. The United Nations Mission collected clear and convincing evidence that chemical weapons were used also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August 2013.
110. This conclusion was based on the following:
(a) Impacted and exploded surface-to-surface rockets, capable to carry a chemical payload, were found to contain Sarin;
(b) Close to the rocket impact sites, in the area where patients were affected, the environment was found to be contaminated by Sarin;
(c) The epidemiology of over 50 interviews given by survivors and health-care workers provided ample corroboration of the medical and scientific results;
(d) A number of patients/survivors were clearly diagnosed as intoxicated by an organophosphorous compound;
(e) Blood and urine samples from the same patients were found positive for Sarin and Sarin signatures.
The US, UK, France and Human Rights Watch blame Assad based on the trajectory of the rockets and type of rocket used (see Appendix 5 of the report). The Russians claim the Syrian government handed them material proof that the rebels carried out the attacks, but to my knowledge neither Russia or Syria ever made that evidence publicly available.
You're free to believe what you like, but don't misrepresent what's in the actual report. We're Slashdot and we're better than that.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
I don't pretend to know who did it, but I think a very relevant question is who gains from the release of chemical weapons? Right now I can see ways in which the rebels gain, Trump gains, the US military-industrial-complex gains, and even perhaps Russia gains some perverse way. Assad, on the other hand, what does he gain? Perhaps he thought he could simply get away with it and took a huge gamble that the international community wouldn't respond. That would demonstrate extremely poor judgment for a dictator who has held onto power for 16 years. In any case, I really hope politicians in the US can put a lid on things. This has the potential to spiral out of control fast.
Why are Tomahawk missiles so expensive?
What price are you charging for yours?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
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
Saddam held iraq together. With despotism and an iron fist for sure, but he did keep it together. The removal of him and failure to provide Iraq with a functional government lead to the formation if Isis, which together, combined with factors you listed has made the current geopolitical situation as complicated and as bloody as it is.
No-one is saying that without Saddam's removal there'd be total peace in Syria/middle-east, but it should be pretty obvious that the way Iraq was handled has contributed to the situation in a major, major way.
The US did not singlehandedly cause Arab spring obviously, but their geopolitics and interference in the region amplified the effects and not for the better.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Yeah. The UK are cunts too. They sell weapons to the Saudi barbarians. You have a point? There can be more than one cunt. Hope that makes it clearer for you.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Amazing how the rebels keep bombing themselves with chemical weapons while never hitting Assad-controlled areas with them. And how they keep simultaneously destroying their hospitals at the same time. Silly rebels!
You don't exist. Go away.
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.
Good thing everyone voted against Clinton and stopped her from starting another war in the middle east. Oh wait...
Obama's "cutting and running out of Iraq ASAP" was the result of an agreement with the Iraqi government that George W. Bush's administration put into place. Obama could either "cut and run", or he could place US troops in Iraq under Iraqi liability for war crimes.
The "creation of the power vacuum" was actually the result of Donald Rumsfeld PERSONALLY and UNILATERALLY deciding to disband the Republican Guard, rather than turn them into local peacekeepers. THAT SINGLE ACTION was what created the Iraqi insurgency and ISIS.
Sorry to disturb your narrative with facts.
While the second Iraq war provided the opportunity for ISIS/ISIL to form, they didn't become big players until two main events. The Arab Spring in 2011 caused unrest in the region; notably in Syria, which devolved into civil war giving them a window of opportunity to spread their influence (both by persuasion and by force). And the capture of massive amounts of U.S. military weapons that had been given to Iraqi troops. The Iraqis fled from ISIL's advance leaving the weapons, rather than stood to fight because U.S. troops had been withdrawn from Iraq to keep Obama's campaign promise. I think most would agree now that that withdrawal was premature, and the Iraqis could've used several more years of training and support before being left to fend for themselves.
There's plenty of blame to go around. Yeah Bush dropped the cake on the floor. But Obama tried to shove it under the carpet to meet a self-imposed deadline, instead of truly cleaning up the mess. Of course the ants were going to find it. And the situation with Syria being caught in a tug-of-war between the U.S. and Russia dates back to the Cold War, and arguably all the way back to the end of WWII and the formation of Israel.
If you really dig down into the root cause of instability in this portion of the Middle East, I'd blame the Europeans for carving up the region after they defeated the Ottoman Empire in the first World War. They drew those borders with little to no consideration for the indigenous cultural, lingual, and political boundaries. As a result, you have disparate peoples forced together into the same "country" trying to form a unified government. And (in the most extreme case) the Kurds - 28 million people spread across as minorities in four countries without a country to call their own.
Not only created a power vacuum, it left tens of thousands of trained Iraqi soldiers without jobs or means of income... many with families to feed.
Obama pulled them out on the timetable that was agreed upon by Bush and the Iraqi government. Iraq would not allow an extension for a large number of troops with immunity as the US demanded.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It wasn't that the Iraqi troops were afraid of the small group of ISIS fighters comping from Syria, but they knew that the minute they showed up the Suni population was going to rise up against them and they would find themselves sourrounded, outnumbered and cut off from their supply lines
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 *
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.