Don’t forget the can of Pepsi. #toosoon
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For those who missed this first time round.
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The Russian disinformation bots are out in force on this one.
Obviously the alt-right have swallowed the “false flag/not Assad’s gas” nonsense hook, line and sinker.
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Trump is the most stupid man in the world. Then there are his followers.
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We need less Florida Man and more Random Man
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They’re easy marks.
Part of me wonders if Bannon’s dismissal from the NSC occurred partially because he wouldn’t get on board with this missile strike. This regime seems to have two opposing cliques when it comes to foreign policy: America First (alt-right, Putin-loving, white supremacist) and Family/Party First (the president’s* familial and Congressional in-laws who subscribe to more neocon and Cold War views). Both cliques are horrible, of course.
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This isn’t evidence that Trump is a Russian puppet, though. Any sane president would talk to Russia before firing missiles at Syria. The goal (I hope) is not to start a war with Russia. The fact that Syria may have been warned might have reduced the body count, but I would hope that racking up a body count wasn’t the point of this (or any) strike.
They have. But most American’s swallowed the Saddam WMDs nonsense. I think there’s legitimate reasons to wonder right now. Assad’s regime denies they used chemical weapons, the west suspects they used chemical weapons, and I can find news articles that lay out why it seems like Assad’s use of weapons is a strong possibility. Who is 100% sure they did? Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump. Over the last few weeks people have been saying of the reasons it matters so much that Trump has no credibility is that he is going to face international crises where he’ll need it. He needs it now and he doesn’t have it.
Trump fired those missiles, maybe because he had real intelligence confirming that the attack was by the Assad regime, maybe because his gut told him it was Assad, or maybe he doesn’t even care whether it was Assad who used the gas or not. The Assad regime would say they didn’t use sarin gas whether they did it or not. The Trump whitehouse would say they know Assad did it whether they know it or not. Russia would condemn the attack publicly even if they knew that the justification was 100% true. McConnell and McCain would rally around anyone firing missiles into the middle east for any reason.
I think those alt-right false-flag conspiracy nuts are nuts, but in this case I feel like I don’t have the facts to argue with them.
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Russian puppet-tude was already well established, AFAIC. My only question was why the puppet seemingly bit his master; this explains that.
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One of the many horrifying things about the Syrian conflict is seeing the alt-right mouth breathers spreading conspiracy theories about the White Helmets being an Al Qaida front responsible for the attacks.
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The reason for the global outlawing of chemical weapons is WW1.
Two generations of people had to live with the long-term results of the gas campaigns, and governments are very much aware of the human and economic costs of supporting crippled and suffering veterans.
A crippled human is not just someone who can no longer fight, a crippled human is someone who consumes resources that the dead do not. Gas attacks are one of the most effective ways to create large numbers of cripples.
It’s only obliquely about morality - it’s mostly about the economic aftermath of war.
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Thankfully, we don’t have to speculate.
“I think we should have been more willing to confront Assad,” Clinton said in the interview, conducted by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
“I really believe we should have and still should take out his air fields and prevent him from being able to use them to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them.”
Emphasis mine
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Yeah, I failed the tiptoeing part just in the next sentence 
My point was that it’s pretty morbid to rank war crimes by technique.
Nice nuance. Some progressives may need to do some soul searching before they oppose this action reflexively. The hypocrisy of bombing Syria for humanitarian reasons but not taking its refugees is tough to swallow in any case.
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IIRC, one of the big problem of gas warfare in WW1 was, that, depending on the wind direction, you might end up gassing yourself. There was no shortage of crippled soldier by “regular” methods anyway, which was a huge deal in the inter-war period.
And just to clarify again, also if my comments here might seem callous, I’m in no way whatsoever defending gas warfare. But since we have so many ingenious, legal, ways to kill or maim people, I find the “red line” a little odd.
I can’t decide whether I have more disgust toward the mouth breathers slandering the White Helmets or the ones tormenting the grieving parents of children slain at Sandy Hook.
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Often you won’t have to make that decision, since they’re usually the same mouth breathers.
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When you kill people with guns you have at least some control over which people the gun is pointed at. By comparison gas is not only a more painful and horrific way to kill/maim people but indiscriminate by its very nature. Even a drone strike can be more effectively targeted to avoid civilian casualties than a gas attack.
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Where is my “dislike” button again?
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Except when you hit a hospital by mistake again.
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Same place where this “sport” is popular: nowhere 
