IRAN/RUSSIA/CHINA and the Coming World War

All that is needed now is a spark to ignite the conflagration. A real one, or an imagined one - like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, will do the job. The real losers will be, again, the Korean people - north and south; though this will be a far cry from a re-play of 1950.

This is a time that one would hope there were cool-headed, rational people at the helm - people who understand the meaning of war and its aftermath. Instead, what do we have? I'm agnostic, and I find myself thinking, "God, help us all."

 

Drop back and think a minute. China is in control of the little fat boy.

 

Remember this sign from the Viet Nam era---"what if they gave a war and no one came". Wonder if we have enough officers to just say "NO". We bombed, strafed, and cruised Libya civilian targets w/o provocation. We do not have the right to do these acts of terror, as the world sees them. What gives us the right to interfere in a sovereign nation's business? Granted it is a horrible civil war but that is exactly what it is--none of our business. In our civil war we killed about a million--60,000 at Gettysburg alone. It was our fight and no one elses.

 

Yeah, looks like it's gonna be dirty, even from where I stand.

Auto-translated from a Swedish newspaper:

Obama limit has elapsed
Fighting in Syria has become a global power struggle - Swedish Åke Sellström, 64, is right in the thick of

Slideshow: Click to start

Quarter
Syria denies, USA threatens, Russia and Iran warns.
The civil war has become a global power struggle.
Right in the thick of standing Swede Ake Sellström, 64, who will try to identify who is behind gassed tack.
A ruling that could have dire consequences for world politics.


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The night of Wednesday bang. Something was spread in the air. Hundreds died and thousands were injured as a result of the attack in Ghouta area outside Damascus.
A steady stream of videos from the area have been spread around the world. The images show rooms full of dead children, people writhing in convulsions. In five days, residents buried their relatives, which they claim have been gassed to death by the Assad regime.
Already a year ago warned U.S. President Barack Obama to the use of chemical weapons was a "red line" as if it were crossed would change the situation drastically. The statement is considered significant when Obama commented similarly about Iran's nuclear program.
Mobilizes Forces
Yesterday promised the Syrian regime that the UN inspectors would have access to the area for the suspect gassed tack. Despite the U.S. mobilizes its military forces around the Mediterranean. Missile Platforms have been placed in Turkey and the Mediterranean fleet has been strengthened. While sending both Russia and Iran a warning west.
- We urge those considering conducting a military campaign in Syria to use their common sense and avoid a tragic mistake, says Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, the Fars news agency.
Right in the thick of Ake's Sellström, 64, from Umeå. He is an expert on chemical and biological weapons, and the leader of the group of UN inspectors that are in place in Damascus and now will visit the affected Ghouta area.
While Ake Sell Ströms weapons inspectors should try to identify what killed so many in Damascus and at best, who carried out the attack, has been America's closest ally Britain already decided:
"Ruthless"
- We are sure that it was the Assad regime that carried out this large-scale chemical attack. We can not, in the 2000s, allowing the notion that chemical weapons may be used recklessly, that people can be killed in this way, and that there should be consequences, said Foreign Secretary William Hague told AFP.
"Every hour counts"
UN chief Ban Ki-moon spoke hours before his vapeninspektörers investigation of the suspected site of a gas attack would begin, writes TT.
Ban Ki-moon suggested that it was already too late to do a good survey:
- Every hour counts. We can not afford more delays. World iaktar Syria. We can not allow what appears to be a serious crime against humanity, he told reporters during his stay in South Korea on Monday morning

 

Some of the weapons smuggled from Iran into Iraq and then out of Iraq into Syria are starting to surface.

Do we belong in this fight?

To the extent that we committed ourselves in the two Gulf Wars. This commitment was to stop the slaughter of innocents and the willingness to pay for it with US Lives.

Stay out and we have lost another Vietnam, go in and we risk a world war, after all it is already a Global event so those who say that we are ratcheting it up need only look to Russia and our own allies for the source of the Gas producing products.

That’s the READERS DIGEST Short Story.

 

If you see many of the pictures in the news it shows people laying on stretchers still in their clothes. People are touching them with either hospital gloves or no gloves. No chem masks are shown only surgical type basks. I would think that if these people were exposed to what we view as chem weapons they wpuld need to be decontaminated first otherwise the rescuers would be exposed. Something doesn't add up...

 

My part of the world seems to agree to NATO interference of some sort. I personally think that Sweden as a nation would be a good candidate to send there. The military need the funding and we need to test our high tech stuff that we never even used in battle before.
IMHO the US should look at more close to home-issues, but that's me as a non-american talking. Thinking about direct threats towards the US from certain crazy eskimoe-looking dictators, who might seem trivial, but crazy people with power has a way of striking from below, or so history shows.

 

Yeah, it all depends upon the chemical used, and the persistence of the agent, but that's an interesting observation.

 

I guess it would depend on their view of what a chemical weapon is. To us CS is a riot control gas. To them it might be considered a chemical weapon. That would mean majority of dead and injuries probably were from getting trampled as people ran away from the CS.

 

This whole thing wreaks of false flag.

 

Not if it was a certain type of Gas.

 

Yet, they do not yet KNOW what gas it is, that is the reason for the inspectors, so no gloves or masks would be quite foolish.

 

Syria, Iran issue first explicit warning to Israel if US attacks | The Times of Israel

 

3rd world country, been a civil war for some time. I doubt they have running water much less gloves and mask for family and friends.

GOT GLOVES!

I have and two types of mask but I doubt any of my neighbors do.

 

that begs the question...who is doing the touching? And what are they trying to accomplish? If they are trained/ funded/professionals that says one thing, if they are neighbors trying to bury the dead, that says another.

 

24 August 2013 Last updated at 18:10 ET

Remember, dead there are in the ground within 24 hours, unless it is a public display for the media. Dead stink real quick in that area.



MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria 'chemical victims'



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Christopher Stokes, from MSF, said the organisation cannot scientifically confirm the use of chemical weapons
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Syria conflict

• Peace chance?
• Tent city
• Claims assessed
• In pictures

Medecins Sans Frontieres says hospitals it supports in Syria treated about 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms", of whom 355 have died.

The medical charity said the patients had arrived in three hospitals in the Damascus area on 21 August - when opposition activists say chemical attacks were launched against rebels.

But MSF says it cannot "scientifically confirm" the use of chemical weapons.

Both sides in the conflict accuse each other of using them.

MSF says staff at the hospitals described a large number of patients arriving in the space of less than three hours with symptoms including convulsions, dilated pupils and breathing problems.



Syrian state TV broadcast footage of what it claims are chemical agents found in rebel-held areas
It said many were treated with atropine, a drug administered to those with "neurotoxic symptoms".

"MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack," said MSF Director of Operations Bart Janssens.

But it added that the symptoms, as well as the "massive influx of patients in a short period of time" strongly suggest mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.

"This would constitute a violation of international humanitarian law, which absolutely prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons," MSF said.
International divisions
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights - a British-based group that monitors the conflict - estimated that 322 had died, 54 of them children.

In the immediate aftermath, casualty figures varied widely with opposition activists saying between several hundred and more than 1,000 had been killed.

Correspondents say MSF's statement adds to mounting allegations that chemical weapons were used in suburbs to the east of Damascus and in an area to the south-west on 21 August.

Unverified video footage posted soon afterwards shows civilians, many of them children, dead or suffering from what appear to be horrific symptoms consistent with a chemical attack.

Rebels and opposition activists accuse forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out such attacks.

But state TV accuses the rebels, saying barrels of chemical weapons were found as troops entered previously rebel-held districts.



The UN's disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrives in Damascus
The international community is split on the issue. Russia and Iran, both allies of Damascus, have separately accused the rebels of using chemical weapons.

But France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Saturday that all available information indicates that the government of Bashar al-Assad was responsible.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has also said he believes this was "a chemical attack by the Assad regime".

In phone call on Saturday, US President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron reaffirmed their "grave concern about the reported use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime against civilians near Damascus on Wednesday", the White House said.

The two leaders agreed to continue consulting closely on the incident and on possible responses by the international community to the use of such weapons, it added.

The UN disarmament chief Angela Kane has meanwhile arrived in Damascus to press the Syrian government to allow access to the sites of the alleged attacks.

A team of UN weapons inspectors has been in Syria since 18 August to inspect three sites, but Damascus has not yet said whether it will allow them to expand their visit.

The UN says more than 100,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Assad began more than two years ago