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we soon will if we aren't already. indirectly, most likely.You know we will end up intervening in that hole.
it's someone else's turn.
You know we will end up intervening in that hole.
http://news.yahoo.com/syria-accuses-...094328867.html
By Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's government and rebels accused each other of launching a deadly chemical attack near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in what would, if confirmed, be the first use of such weapons in the two-year conflict.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who has resisted overt military intervention in Syria, has warned President Bashar al-Assad that any use of chemical weapons would be a "red line". There has, however, been no suggestion of rebels possessing such arms.
Syria's state television said rebels fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 25 people and wounded dozens. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said 16 soldiers were among the dead.
The most notorious use of chemical weapons in the Middle East in recent history was in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja where an estimated 5,000 people died in a poison gas attack ordered by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 25 years ago.
No Western governments or international organizations confirmed a chemical attack in Syria, but Russia, an ally of Damascus, accused rebels of carrying out such a strike.
Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Meqdad, said his government would send a letter to the U.N. Security Council "calling on it to handle its responsibilities and clarify a limit to these crimes of terrorism and those that support it inside Syrian Arab Republic".
He warned that the violence that had engulfed Syria was a regional threat. "This is rather a starting point from which (the danger) will spread to the entire region, if not the entire world," he said.
The United States said it had no evidence to substantiate charges that the rebels had used chemical weapons.
U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said it was not in a position to confirm the reports, adding that if either side used such weapons it would be a "grave violation of international law".
Britain said its calculations would change if a chemical attack had taken place. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said it would "demand a serious response from the international community and force us to revisit our approach so far".
BREATHING PROBLEMS
A Reuters photographer said victims he had visited in Aleppo hospitals were suffering breathing problems and that people had said they could smell chlorine after the attack.
"I saw mostly women and children," said the photographer, who cannot be named for his own safety.
He quoted victims at the University of Aleppo hospital and the al-Rajaa hospital as saying people were dying in the streets and in their houses.
The revolt against four decades of family rule started with peaceful protests two years ago but descended into a civil war after Assad's forces shot and arrested thousands of activists and the opposition turned to armed insurgency.
Assad is widely believed to have a chemical weapons arsenal.
Syrian officials have neither confirmed nor denied this, but have said that if it existed it would be used to defend against foreign aggression, not against Syrians. There have been no previous reports of chemical weapons in the hands of insurgents.
Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired "a rocket containing poison gases" at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city's southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.
"The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death," the minister said.
But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad's forces for the alleged chemical strike.
"We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents," he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.
MILITANT GROUPS
Washington has expressed concern about chemical weapons falling into the hands of militant groups - either hardline Islamist rebels fighting to topple Assad or his regional allies.
Israel has threatened military action if such arms were sent to the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.
Zoabi said Turkey and Qatar, which have supported rebels, bore "legal, moral and political responsibility" for the strike - a charge dismissed by a Turkish official as baseless.
Zoabi told a news conference that Syria's military would never use internationally banned weapons.
"Syria's army leadership has stressed this before and we say it again, if we had chemical weapons we would never use them due to moral, humanitarian and political reasons," he said.
Syrian state TV aired footage of what it said were casualties of the attack arriving at one hospital in Aleppo.
Men, women and children were rushed inside on stretchers as doctors inserted medical drips into their arms and oxygen tubes into their mouths. None had visible wounds to their bodies, but some interviewed said they had trouble breathing.
An unidentified doctor interviewed on the channel said the attack was either "phosphorus or poison" but did not elaborate.
A young girl on a stretcher wept as she said: "My chest closed up. I couldn't talk. I couldn't breathe ... We saw people falling dead to the floor. My father fell, he fell and now we don't know where he is. God curse them, I hope they die."
A man in a green surgical mask, who said he had been helping to evacuate the casualties, said: "It was like a powder, and anyone who breathed it in fell to the ground."
"PINK SMOKE"
A rebel fighter in Khan al-Assal, about 8 km (5 miles) southwest of Aleppo, said he had seen pink-tinged smoke rising after a powerful blast shook the area.
Ahmed al-Ahmed, from the Ansar brigade in a rebel-controlled military base near Khan al-Assal, told Reuters that a missile had hit the town at around 8 a.m. (0600 GMT).
"We were about 2 km from the blast. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that everything in the room started falling over. When I finally got up to look at the explosion, I saw smoke with a pinkish-purple color rising up.
"I didn't smell anything, but I did not leave the building I was in," said Ahmed, speaking via Skype.
"The missile, maybe a Scud, hit a regime area, praise God, and I'm sure that it was an accident. My brigade certainly does not have that (chemical) capability and we've been talking to many units in the area, they all deny it."
Ahmed said the explosion was quickly followed by an air strike. A fighter jet circled a police school held by the rebels on the outskirts of Khan al-Assal and bombed the area, he said.
His account could not be independently verified.
Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in Vienna he had no independent information about any use of such arms in Syria.
Fighting continued elsewhere, with rebels firing mortar bombs into central Damascus, residents and pro-Assad media said.
Security forces have reinforced the center of the capital - home to state offices and the residences of government officials - but rebels pushing into the outskirts of Damascus are staging increased attacks on districts in the heart of the city.
Syrian rebels said on Monday they had fired mortar bombs at the presidential palace, Damascus International Airport and security buildings to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that has left at least 70,000 dead.
A government-run station, Addounia TV, said "terrorists", a term Assad's supporters use for the rebels, fired bombs at "civilian areas of Damascus, including near the Saudi embassy". It said there were casualties but gave no details.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Frerik Dahl in Vienna, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Mohammed Abbas in London and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Michael Roddy)
we soon will if we aren't already. indirectly, most likely.You know we will end up intervening in that hole.
it's someone else's turn.
Rubio was just on talking about needing to make sure that we go in there and see to it that the most well armed well trained are not the ones with al queda backing. The push is on.
why don't we dropship Rubio in there and he can figure that out since he thinks its so simple
lol Marco rubio
lol pandering to Jews with neoconservative foreign policy
lol Florida republicans
60000 syrians dead. and some on here are worried about getting involved?
Why? How will you be affected? How are you going to be involved? A few posts about how we shouldn't police the world
How compassionate to make dry posts as an anonymous poster. Meanwhile thinking you wanting the government to take from others to give to poor as your part. As your charity
it involves us when we get pulled into another full scale regional conflict and it dominates our economy even further. the US doesnt have any business over there, we control nothing outside of our own borders no country does. we need to go back to isolationism..it's just not our place and the leaders aren't doing it for "good" they're doing it for profit. gotta keep that war machine rolling...maintain that strong middle east presence. gotta protect our investment, need that petrodollar.
you clowns already contributed 100m AID money to the rebels, might as well join the war...
the only profit is those arms dealers who sell their to the US govt who are profiteering, you dont hear the govt profiteering from anything besides rebuilding contract works which earns nothing
Remember when I said in the other thread I'd be cool with them cutting manpower if we stopped getting missions? Yeah... that's never going to happen.
SnC, we could go in and kill the people who used the chemical weapons, but it wouldn't bring the dead Syrians back. And then we'd leave, and then some other assholes would probably take over. That's what I've learned from our foray into "nation building" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On a moral level, yeah I'd love to send people over there and take charge and run security. But on a practical level, can we even be assured that we could effectively do so? What about all the other places in the world where is happening? Should we fix those too? And I don't think it's wrong for people to think that we should be spending money in our country instead of others, now when the debt is increasing every day in leaps and bounds.
It's their country and if they want to self-implode, it's their problem.
MY country taking away from me or anybody else and doing whatever is MY problem because it's MY country. How difficult is that to understand?
thats cause you clowns continue to put in puppet leaders to represent for you and benefit you, while the people hate those puppet leaders who havnt done to earn such position let alone appointing every family member to high political positions without any accreditation....lol puppet leaders history over the years....a bunch of idiots who are not worst/better then the clown b4 them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democra...ngo#Civil_warsIn 2009, people in the Congo may still be dying at a rate of an estimated 45,000 per month,[31] and estimates of the number who have died from the long conflict range from 900,000 to 5,400,000.[32] The death toll is due to widespread disease and famine; reports indicate that almost half of the individuals who have died are children under the age of 5.[33] There have been frequent reports of weapon bearers killing civilians, destroying property, widespread sexual violence,[34] causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes or otherwise breaching humanitarian and human rights law. An estimated 200,000 women have been raped.[35]
So when is the USA deploying troops in jungles of Congo?
I wonder if the belief that Saddam gave friends of his in Syria, his chemical weapons, is true?
Yes, I've had a lot of say making those decisions. I should make sure to tell Obama about these things the next time I see him.
It won't happen under this president. The factions don't support terrorism against the USA, so Obama isn't going to support one side to be friends with like he did with the Arab Spring.
No, yoni.
LOL...
There are reports of it heading to Syria before the weapons inspections ended. It is also confirmed:
In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, "Saddam's Secrets."
It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein's WMD threat.
As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.
There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.
There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada's comments came more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
Yes yoni, I'm sure they are still translating the do ents.
Yeah, that self determination really worked in Egypt. It's not who we put in place, it's the fact that those assholes haven't evolved enough to govern without it turning into a military dictatorship.
I don't know, every democracy is going to have growing pains, we had a whole "cons ution" before we had a cons ution.
It's the fact that we feel we can put people in place that is the basis of a lot of the problems over there.
When the jungles of Congo get some oil. Duh.
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