Massive use of chemical weapons in Syria, 1,429 killed including 426 children

[DGuller]

That's it. Kerry just waved Uncle Sam's wang on TV.

BONER DEFCON 1.

That settle it, you need to get a certificate of sanity from the looney bin before making any life changing decisions. Kerry as rabid warmonger? You might be seeing things that are not there.

Well, hallucinations are likely when enough blood volume flows away from the brain.  Those boners don't sustain themselves.

[Ed Anger]

My war boners and murder boners are frictionless machines.

[Ed Anger]

[Ed Anger]

I don't think I want a 10 quid holiday. 

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I don't think I want a 10 quid holiday. 

Don;t worry, I'm sure after all the fees and extras it will be a lot more than that.

[CountDeMoney]

Funeral to be held at The French Embassy

Awesome.  Oh, those whacky Brits.

[mongers]

I don't think I want a 10 quid holiday. 

Don;t worry, I'm sure after all the fees and extras it will be a lot more than that.

Apparently these offers are genuine, you really can get a ten quid holiday, but you have to share the resort with lots of other sun readers.   

[lustindarkness]

[dps]

My war boners and murder boners are frictionless machines.

Sad that yours aren't big enough to touch the orifice walls in order to generate any friction.

[sbr]

[CountDeMoney]

My war boners and murder boners are frictionless machines.

Sad that yours aren't big enough to touch the orifice walls in order to generate any friction.

It's like throwing a frozen Tomahawk cruise missile down a hallway.

[Legbiter]

Yay, Britain has about as much foreign clout as Lichtenstein. 

You wanna use poison gas to kill off a troublesome local bother, why go right ahead. The UK will send a strongly worded letter, provided Milliband can derive 15 minutes of fame for doing so.









* Personal inclination leans to YES*

[Ed Anger]

My war boners and murder boners are frictionless machines.

Sad that yours aren't big enough to touch the orifice walls in order to generate any friction.

It's like throwing a frozen Tomahawk cruise missile down a hallway.

[CountDeMoney]

Even if the British don't, the Washington Post and the Economist still believe in the enforcement of international norms on the use of chemical weapons.

U.S. must act against crimes against humanity
By Editorial Board, Friday, August 30, 6:52 PM

A PERCEPTION has been growing over the past week that President Obama has worked himself into a jam on Syria policy. We agree that he faces no easy options, and that some of his challenges ensue from his mistakes as well as those of the previous administration. But let's be clear: It's not Mr. Obama, nor George W. Bush, who has brought the United States to this difficult place. It is the crime against humanity allegedly committed by Syria's leader and the fact that no country other than the United States can or will respond fittingly to such a crime.

Possibly the largest constraint Mr. Obama is encountering as he contemplates military action in Syria stems from the intelligence blunder that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it and the governments of all its major allies, was convinced that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Most Americans, including this page, were convinced, too. It is no surprise, and it is not a bad thing, that this time around people are demanding more evidence than they otherwise might.

Mr. Obama also is reaping the fruits of his own advocacy of disengagement from the Middle East. The president repeatedly has told the American people that the era of war was ending, that the United States could concentrate on nation-building at home and that it had no vital interests in Syria as that nation collapsed into civil war and began to endanger its neighbors. Americans, and U.S. allies, too, naturally would want some explanation of why all that may have changed.

The British Parliament's vote against military action has compounded the challenge. This time around, the United States may have few but the French on its side. A president who has stressed commitment to international law is faced with going it nearly alone and certainly without the U.N. Security Council, where Syria's abettors Russia and China stand in the way.

The American people are understandably war-weary, and their Congress reflects that view. But Americans, even when not weary of war, are almost always wary of it, and that is good. It should never be easy to go into battle, even for a "surgical strike" or a "limited engagement." If Mr. Obama chooses to fire missiles at Syria, people will die, including some civilians, and unpredictable consequences will follow. There had better be good reason.

On Friday, Secretary of State John F. Kerry laid out that reason. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Kerry said, has used against his own people a weapon that for 90 years the international community — sometimes known as the civilized world — has deemed beyond the pale. This was not a question of possibly developing or manufacturing or storing such weapons; it was blatant use, killing or injuring thousands, including, Mr. Kerry said, at least 426 children who died. "f we choose to live in the world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it," Mr. Kerry said, "there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will."

Some ask why the United States should care about 1,400 deaths from gassing when more than 100,000 have died in Syria's war. We're among those who believe the administration should have done more, short of boots on the ground, to forestall those deaths, and we believe that any military action should be part of a strategy to influence the war's outcome.

But these deaths are different. A line has been crossed; if there are no consequences, it will be crossed again. Someday U.S. soldiers on a battlefield could be the victim of the resulting impunity. If the United States does not ensure that Syria faces consequences for crossing the line, no one will, and the U.S. response should be strong enough to prevent Mr. Assad from committing further atrocities. "A lot of people think something should be done," Mr. Obama said Friday, "but nobody wants to do it." He would be right to conclude that, in such circumstances, the United States must.

Syria
Hit him hard
Present the proof, deliver an ultimatum and punish Bashar Assad for his use of chemical weapons

THE grim spectacle of suffering in Syria—100,000 of whose people have died in its civil war—will haunt the world for a long time. Intervention has never looked easy, yet over the past two and a half years outsiders have missed many opportunities to affect the outcome for the better. Now America and its allies have been stirred into action by President Bashar Assad's apparent use of chemical weapons to murder around 1,000 civilians—the one thing that even Barack Obama has said he would never tolerate.

The American president and his allies have three choices: do nothing (or at least do as little as Mr Obama has done to date); launch a sustained assault with the clear aim of removing Mr Assad and his regime; or hit the Syrian dictator more briefly but grievously, as punishment for his use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Each carries the risk of making things worse, but the last is the best option.

No option is perfect

From the Pentagon to Britain's parliament, plenty of realpolitikers argue that doing nothing is the only prudent course. Look at Iraq, they say: whenever America clumsily breaks a country, it ends up "owning" the problem. A strike would inevitably inflict suffering: cruise missiles are remarkably accurate, but can all too easily kill civilians. Mr Assad may retaliate, perhaps assisted by his principal allies, Iran, Russia and Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shias' party-cum-militia, which is practised in the dark arts of international terror and which threatens Israel with 50,000 rockets and missiles. What happens if Britain's base in Cyprus is struck by Russian-made Scud missiles? Or if intervention leads to some of the chemical weapons ending up with militants close to al-Qaeda? And why further destabilise Syria's neighbours—Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq?

Because doing nothing carries risks that are even bigger (see article). If the West tolerates such a blatant war crime, Mr Assad will feel even freer to use chemical weapons. He had after all stepped across Mr Obama's "red line" several times by using these weapons on a smaller scale—and found that Mr Obama and his allies blinked. An American threat, especially over WMD, must count for something: it is hard to see how Mr Obama can eat his words without the superpower losing credibility with the likes of Iran and North Korea.

And America's cautiousness has cost lives. A year ago, this newspaper argued for military intervention: not for Western boots on the ground, but for the vigorous arming of the rebels, the creation of humanitarian corridors, the imposition of no-fly zones and, if Mr Assad ignored them, an aerial attack on his air-defence system and heavy weaponry. At the time Mr Assad's regime was reeling, most of the rebels were relatively moderate, the death toll was less than half the current total and the conflict had yet to spill into other countries. Some of Mr Obama's advisers also urged him to arm the rebels; distracted by his election, he rebuffed them—and now faces, as he was repeatedly warned, a much harder choice.

So why not do now what Mr Obama should have done then, and use the pretext of the chemical strike to pursue the second option of regime change? Because, sadly, the facts have changed. Mr Assad's regime has become more solid, while the rebels, shorn of Western support and dependent mainly on the Saudis and Qataris, have become more Islamist, with the most extreme jihadis doing much of the fighting. An uprising against a brutal tyrant has kindled a sectarian civil war. The Sunnis who make up around three-quarters of the population generally favour the rebels, whereas many of those who adhere to minority religions, including Christians, have reluctantly sided with Mr Assad. The opportunity to push this war to a speedy conclusion has gone—and it is disingenuous to wrap that cause up with the chemical weapons.

So Mr Obama should focus on the third option: a more limited punishment of such severity that Mr Assad is deterred from ever using WMD again. Hitting the chemical stockpiles themselves runs the risk both of poisoning more civilians and of the chemicals falling into the wrong hands. Far better for a week of missiles to rain down on the dictator's "command-and-control" centres, including his palaces. By doing this, Mr Obama would certainly help the rebels, though probably not enough to overturn the regime. With luck, well-calibrated strikes might scare Mr Assad towards the negotiating table.

Do it well and follow through

But counting on luck would be a mistake, especially in this fortune-starved country. There is no tactical advantage in rushing in: Mr Assad and his friends will have been preparing for contingencies, including ways to hide his offending chemical weapons, for many months. Mr Obama must briskly go through all sorts of hoops before ordering an attack.

The first task is to lay out as precisely as anybody can the evidence, much of it inevitably circumstantial, that Mr Assad's forces were indeed responsible for the mass atrocity. America's secretary of state, John Kerry, was right that Syria's refusal to let the UN's team of inspectors visit the poison-gas sites for five days after the attack was tantamount to an admission of guilt. But, given the fiasco of Iraq's unfound weapons, it is not surprising that sceptics still abound. Mr Obama must also assemble the widest coalition of the willing, seeing that China and Russia, which is increasingly hostile to Western policies (see next leader), are sure to block a resolution in the UN Security Council to use force under Chapter 7. NATO—including, importantly, Germany and Turkey—already seems onside. The Arab League is likely to be squared, too.

And before the missiles are fired, Mr Obama must give Mr Assad one last chance: a clear ultimatum to hand over his chemical weapons entirely within a very short period. The time for inspections is over. If Mr Assad gives in, then both he and his opponents will be deprived of such poisons—a victory for Mr Obama. If Mr Assad refuses, he should be shown as little mercy as he has shown to the people he claims to govern. If an American missile then hits Mr Assad himself, so be it. He and his henchmen have only themselves to blame.

[citizen k]

Assad's forces try to capture gassed Damascus suburb: activists


AMMAN (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad's forces fired rocket barrages on Friday at a Damascus suburb hit by nerve gas last week, in another attempt to capture the strategic town ahead of a possible U.S. strike, opposition activists said.

Elite guard units backed by tanks advanced from two directions on the suburb of Mouadamiya, 8 km (5 miles) west of Damascus along the road to the nearby Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but were met with heavy resistance from two rebel brigades dug in the town, they said.

Four rebel fighters were killed, the opposition sources said. There were no immediate reports of casualties among loyalist forces. Restrictions by Syrian authorities on independent media makes verification difficult.

At least 80 people were killed by a poison gas attack on Mouadamiya on the morning of August 21, an hour after hundreds of people died from a similar attack in eastern neighborhoods of Damascus, according to opposition activists.

The United States made clear on Friday that it would punish Assad for the "brutal and flagrant" chemical attacks that it says killed more than 1,400 people.

Assad has denied using chemical weapons.

His forces have intensified the shelling of Mouadamiya and eastern Damascus neighborhoods since August 21, hoping to drive out rebel brigades, who had encroached on his seat on power in the capital, according to opposition activists.

Mouadamiya borders the Mezze military Airport, a main base for loyalist troops and militia, and the headquarters of the Fourth Mechanised Division, which is headed by Assad's feared brother Maher and comprised mainly of troops from his Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, that has dominated Syria for since the 1960s.

Activist Wassim Ahmad said the missile barrages hitting Mouadamiya were the heaviest since the suburb was besieged by the Fourth Division and Republican Guards units nine months ago.

"It appears the regime is trying to seize Mouadamiya to create a distance between the rebels and the Mezze airport and the Fourth Division, before the American strike makes them more of a threat," he said.

Ahmad said thousands of civilians remained besieged in the suburb, along with the fighters. He added that shelling on Thursday killed three members of the one family. A boy and a girl survived after their father, mother a 12-year-old brother were killed, he said.