
U.S. launches cruise missile strike on Syria after chemical weapons attack - hjalle
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/06/us-launches-cruise-missile-strike-syria-after-chemical-weapons-attack/100142330/
======
aedron
With the media, "believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see"
is prudent. After having been dragged along by the nose in the case of Iraq's
(non-existent) WMDs, the world should know better than to eat any old
narrative presented, including this one about chemical weapons attacks.

What remains surprising to me is that this is still considered an extreme
and/or paranoid attitude by many otherwise educated people. Is it really so
difficult to believe that entities like Associated Press or the Washington
Post, privately held entities, serve specific interests? Or that the power
elite, a small group that holds 95%+ of the world's wealth, would put those
resources to use in shaping public opinion to their ends?

Yet even suggesting the possibility, that you can't necessarily believe what
you read in the biggest newspaper (or, shocker, the press bureaus), will yield
uncomfortable looks shot back and forth, like you might be strapped with a
suicide bomb. I suppose it is a modern day taboo that we can't trust the
central institutions in our society.

~~~
simonh
Of course we can't trust them. That's why we have a free press and free speech
- so that there is no central authority controlling the media. Anyone who
wants to set up an independent media, or carry out any form of independent
investigation or reporting can do so. It's strength in diversity. Anyone who
has reason to doubt these reports can do exactly what these reporters did, and
in fact there are plenty of cases of incorrect reports being exposed. That's
the system working as it is supposed to.

~~~
delegate
>Anyone who wants to set up an independent media, or carry out any form of
independent investigation or reporting can do so.

I can't - I don't have the resources or expertise to set up a global media
conglomerate.

Can you ?

I could try a start up, but I would need to take venture money and that comes
with giving up some control...

Pretty soon we are going to reach the conclusion that there are maybe a couple
of people in the world who could, in theory, create a media outlet able to
compete with the established ones.

So not 'anyone'.

~~~
dagw
_I don 't have the resources or expertise to set up a global media
conglomerate._

Start small. Grab a camera, buy a plane ticket, set up a twitter account and a
web page. Congratulations you are now a journalist. If your work is good you
will find an audience a grow from there.

There are also lots of people already doing this, and you can follow their
work if you wish

------
dollarchy
Independent report by MIT researchers conclusively refuted US claims that the
2013 sarin attacks were conducted by the Syrian Government after analysis of
the rocket trajectories: [https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-
sarin](https://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin)

I would caution against believing any media reports until a similar analysis
is done for the current incident. Assad has no reason for jeopardizing his
current favorable position.

~~~
goleafsgo
Thank you for the link.

> Most significant, he [Obama] failed to acknowledge something known to the US
> intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the
> country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study
> concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket
> attack.

> When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the
> administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

I think many of us are asking the same thing: Is the intelligence we're being
fed cherry picked.

It's unsettling that the government and the media does not have to be
accountable to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
which is what the general public expects.

What happens to those people who mislead us, and are we finally going to
smarten up?

------
kchoudhu
The quickest solution to a crisis at the approval polls is a war in the Middle
East.

How many will die this time?

~~~
dnautics
Zero, so far. Let's hope it stays at that.

~~~
serf
AP ~2-3 hrs ago:

"The U.S. strikes —59 missiles launched from the USS Ross and USS Porter — hit
the government-controlled Shayrat air base in central Syria, where U.S.
officials say the Syrian military planes that dropped the chemicals had taken
off. The U.S. missiles hit at 8:45 p.m. in Washington, 3:45 Friday morning in
Syria. The missiles targeted the base's airstrips, hangars, control tower and
ammunition areas, officials said.

The attack killed some Syrians and wounded others, Talal Barazi, the governor
of Syria's Homs province, told The Associated Press. He didn't give precise
numbers."

~~~
hjalle
Looks like 6 dead

[https://www.thequint.com/world/2017/04/07/usa-attack-
syria-g...](https://www.thequint.com/world/2017/04/07/usa-attack-syria-
government-cruise-missiles-civil-war)

------
xchip
We've seen that before. In order to attack a country you first claim they did
something terrible to kids, then you bomb the hell out of them.

~~~
pathy
You are joking right?

Syria used sarin gas on civilians. There are few things as terrifying and
atrocious as chemical weapons. It is absolute insanity to use nerve gas, never
mind the other war crimes committed by the Assad regime.

~~~
tomjen3
Guns, burns, bombs, live burrial, drowning at sea.

Dying from gas is no more horrible than those.

~~~
EliRivers
I reckon it might be much more horrible than a swift gunshot to the back of
the head.

~~~
a_imho
_For nearly a decade, Ketchum, a psychiatrist, went about his work in the
belief that chemicals are more humane instruments of warfare than bullets and
shrapnel—or, at least, he told himself such things. To achieve his dream, he
worked tirelessly at a secluded Army research facility, testing chemical
weapons on hundreds of healthy soldiers, and thinking all along that he was
doing good._

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/operation-
delir...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/operation-delirium)

~~~
Grangar
Damn, that looks like a fantastic read. Thanks!

------
llamataboot
And so we jump into a 20-sided civil war that Russia also has a strong vested
interest in (that airbase was being used by Russia to stage some of its
operations -- interestingly enough, no Russian stuff was destroyed)

US military intervention in the Middle East. What could go wrong?

------
throwaway87541
Note: This comes at a time when the "moderate opposition" people and Assad's
side were/are meeting in Geneve for peace talks.

------
dagenleg
It's really disgusting when domestic politics spills out into the outside,
resulting in wars and misery. I wish this vestige of imperialist times, the
practice of "short victorious war" would finally die off.

------
audessuscest
U.S. are _still_ an ally of ISIS. That's a shame...

~~~
simonh
That's bullshit. US planes are bombing ISIS as well.

~~~
audessuscest
... : [http://heavy.com/news/2017/04/isis-syria-attack-trump-us-
mis...](http://heavy.com/news/2017/04/isis-syria-attack-trump-us-missile-
assault-response-terrorism-assad-homs/)

------
scottLobster
So there are a lot of sinister theories floating around these comments...
might I be so bold as to propose that this is simply what it looks like?

People have attributed Machiavellian goals to Trump's childishness before, and
it turned out he was just being childish. I have zero problem believing he saw
the pictures of gassed children and directly instructed Mattis to smack Assad.

Honestly I see this as Trump being the broken clock right twice a day. Putin
has long used his status as a nuclear power to muscle his way around (Georgia,
Syria, Ukraine, Turkey, etc) as he knows that other nations will think twice
about shooting at his forces, so long as his actions remain reasonably limited
and he expands his influence slowly. It's about time someone called him on
that.

As for whether the Syrian government actually launched the strike, keep in
mind that the US, for all its flaws, has the best equipped and most expansive
intelligence apparatus in the world. Whatever Trump thinks, I assure you THEY
do not want another Iraq-like mistake and almost certainly crossed every t and
dotted every i on this.

------
chj
Why can't U.S. have a leader like Trudeau?

[https://twitter.com/jslaternyc/status/850164875368296450](https://twitter.com/jslaternyc/status/850164875368296450)

~~~
cmdkeen
Because calling for the UN Security Council to do something is easy but often
doesn't achieve anything, Russia, with its veto, is hardly going to allow its
ally in Assad to be implicated is it?

The question for Trudeau is - when Russia says no, then what?

~~~
chj
Ok, so let's skip investigation and just attack Syria without evidences.

------
cyberferret
From the transcript of his speech about the attack, it sounds like the
intelligence community has pretty solid evidence and proof that the aircraft
taking part in the bombing left from the particular airfield that was targeted
by the cruise missile strike.

I shall hope that this will signal a renewal in the current administration's
efforts to rely on actual government intel services for strategic knowledge,
as opposed to listening to talking heads on particular mainstream news and
taking them at their word...

~~~
manicdee
Remember when we had strong evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction?

~~~
cyberferret
Fair enough - point taken.

Also, just checking the news updates and it appears that the President did not
clear this strike with congress, but instead informed the Russian authorities
about his intentions before issuing the order. Is there any more clarification
on this?

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Why do you think informing the Russians was inappropriate? The situation is
very delicate - two superpowers fight a war, supporting in a limited way two
opposing sides of a conflict. US informing the Russians means they give them
enough time to evacuate their people. The intention is not to kill Russians or
to start a much more terrible war.

------
hncommenter_
Good luck, America

------
nefitty
I am generally anti-war, anti-Trump, anti-Republican... so you can imagine my
surprise at the sense of relief this act has given me. Assad has been stomping
on innocents in his little part of the world without substantive rebuke for
far too long. What's the point of the US's ideals if we don't stand up to the
bullies of the world? I know intervention leads to horrors, but refusal to act
to stop war crimes is almost as morally reprehensible as committing them
yourself. Anyone else thinking along the same lines right now?

~~~
mistermumble
I agree that Assad is "stomping on innocents". But so are the rebels he is
fighting, namely ISIS and Al Qaeda and similar groups in a smorgasbord of
terror. Shall we bomb them too (and thereby strengthen Assad)? Mideast
politics are horrendously complicated and need to be untangled carefully, as
one would untangle the wiring in a bomb. Unintended consequences are the norm,
unfortunately.

~~~
nefitty
Absolutely right. We shouldn't use the same methods to fight terrorism,
though. If one of your opponents plays the centralized-government military
game, play by those rules, if another plays by the decentralized-guerilla
warfare game, play that. At the end of the day I think it's the US's
responsibility, as arguably the most powerful military force on earth, to
defend humans caught in the crossfire of other military actors. My support of
unilateral action against Assad does not preclude my support for fighting the
smaller repressive regimes he claims to be chasing.

