Posts by Stephen R
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Russell Brown,
Is there really that much conflict between the regime ordering them out after 90 minutes and the regime saying it couldn’t guarantee their safety? Is he implying the UN – contrary to all appearances – had an agenda to frame the regime for the attacks?
If "the regime ordered them out after 90 minutes" is being used as evidence that the regime did it and they're trying to stop the investigation, that seems to me to be distinctly different to "They were in rebel held areas and the army said they weren't going to stop fighting the war just for them". Practically speaking, it might not be that different for the people on the ground, but the conclusions that can reasonably be drawn are different, no?
But the evidence that the other side inflicted this on their own towns as a provocation currently seems thin to non-existent.
Yeah. I'd agree with that. My current best guess is that the regime ordered it, with second place coming in to "the army did it without telling the political leaders".
I'm still having difficulty with the end-goal of airstrikes. What can they do that's useful?
I could almost imagine the US putting drones overhead and toasting anything that looks like a chemical weapons delivery platform with hellfire missiles, since some of the stories about the information gathering possibilities of the drones are quite impressive - loiter over this area and video everything that happens, so we can track back from them loading that missile launcher to see whether it came from the explosives bunker or the chemical weapons bunker, then decide whether to explode the launcher.
The Syrians do have radar and anti-air missiles that the Afghans and Pakistanis lack so I'm not sure if that's really practical.
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William R Polk is quoted extensively in
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-2-william-polk/279255/Which provides more information than I've seen before. The summary could be "It's complicated, the evidence is mixed, and there are no good options".
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The Le Monde Article suggested the military were using gas to avoid having to assault strongpoints held by rebels. I can understand why they're keen to avoid FISH and CHIPS* and how gas might be attractive to the military. Low doses seem to be enough to get the rebels to retreat without even killing that many (or leaving that much evidence) - people who don't die quickly from Sarin appear to recover in a few days.
It's possible the people who have to charge into buildings full of rebels might have different priorities about the use of chemical weapons to the people worried about US airstrikes on their HQ.
*Fighting In Someone's House and Causing Havoc In People's Streets - The UK have much better acronyms than the US. -
That won't stop PgpKey saying that Franks doesn't understand the legislation though.
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Legal Beagle: Fact Check: New Bail Laws, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
And what were the real reasons?
Need to distract from the Labour leadership contest? If the reaction of the National party is any indication, they're really worried Labour might do well out of the whole process.
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The US seem to be claiming that the evidence the Assad regime did it is that the US intercepted a phone call from the central control to an army unit near the front asking "WTF? You did WHAT?".
A US intelligence official told Foreign Policy magazine that agents had intercepted "panicked" telephone calls between the Syrian defense ministry and a field officer just after the 21 August chemical attack.
The US also saying they will make a response just "muscular" enough so they don't get mocked by the other world powers...
Because you wouldn't want to be laughed at for not killing enough people.
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OnPoint: BTW, the NZ Police can use…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
There's a hack for that.
Only if you don't tell anyone you're using it. The problem is that truecrypt makes it very difficult to prove you haven't got a hidden encrypted disk (short of filling the HD with cat pictures) in which case, being innocent won't stop the rubber hoses.
Plausibly deniable is not enough for some people.
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OnPoint: BTW, the NZ Police can use…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
If you wanted to post something publicly that you thought someone else might edit, signing it but not encrypting it would provide anyone who looked at it (and cared enough to check) with confidence that it was what you actually wrote.
Assuming that nobody else has your private key, it's also good evidence if you were making a contract that you actually agreed to it, but I'm not sure that it's considered valid by the laws yet.
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Hard News: This time it's Syria, in reply to Graham Dunster,
Nothing in the stratfor report is terribly surprising, but they do lay it out in depressing clarity just how bad the situation is.
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And is anyone taking bets on whether the US kills more civilians with its "intervention" than were killed in the gas attack?