Likely sarin (or other nerve agent) attack by terrorist Assad regime/allies

[Solomons Porch]

*SAD*

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Kassem Eid, a survivor from the 2013 sarin attack, describes his ordeal and pleads that this time there is action. Please listen to the entire gut-wrenching testimony (including how they thought he was dead so he was placed with the other corpses) as I'm only transcribing small parts:

"If I can say with all truth that the most painful memory about that attack is watching President Obama failing to fulfill his promise about breaking the red line. When I was watching him talking about making that deal with the Russians instead of punishing Assad at least for once, just for once, for committing this crime against humanity. But he failed, he broke his promise. And with a broken promise he broke a lot of hearts in Syria.

If I may just say a few words to President Trump if you just give me a chance:

"[...]Please help us. Go after the man who created all of this mess, Bashar al-Assad. Don't make the same mistake President Obama did; don't let Bashar al-Assad walk away. Give the people of Syria hope. Show the United States actually cares about human rights and it's not just words. Please do that, please do that."

Syrian survivor of gas attack pleads with Trump to avoid Obama's mistakes

 

[thisguynamednick]

David Mack on Twitter

I'm not sure if this is a good or absolutely terrifying development, but a response is being developed, apparently. Involving things like an international coalition, military action, etc. No idea if it's regime change or merely a reaction, but it looks like Assad really screwed up this time (not that he hasn't been screwing things up deliberately for the past six years).

 

[TestifyToTruth]

Didn't the UN conclude that the rebels were the ones who did the last attack?

UN has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas

Syrian rebels used Sarin nerve gas, not Assad’s regime: U.N. official

UN accuses Syrian rebels of chemical weapons use

UN's Del Ponte says evidence Syria rebels 'used sarin' - BBC News

Quite right, the rebels/terrorists have a track record of doing gas attacks and then (with Western mainstream media support) blame the Assad govt. They usually time such attacks when the Syrian army and its Russian/Iranian/Hezbollah allies are winning and just before a major peace talks conference in Europe. The Assad govt has absolutely no benefit in this timing. It is a pattern. But you only know the pattern if you read beyond US mainstream media (which censored the report by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh that exposed al-Nusra rebels/terrorists as behind the 2013 Ghouta sarin gas attack in Syria that was blamed on the Assad govt.)

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Abdul Hamid Yousef lost about 25 members of his family in the sarin attack, including his wife and 10-month-old twins, 2 brothers, their children, and their cousins. Here are his twins, Aya and Ahmad, when they were alive:

Their father said on CNN before breaking down into tears:

"What international community is this that doesn't listen to people? Is there even a humanitarian conscience still? There aren't any left. And all the Arab leaders, they're all asleep! And the US does whatever suits its interests. And the Russians have their own interests with Bashar, their tyrant. My children aren't the first to be martyred."

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156371129926509

"My entire family's gone." This Syrian man says around 25 of his family members died in the chemical attack including his wife and two twin babies. 'My entire family's gone': Syrian man says 25 relatives died in strike - CNN.com

Another video on BBC: Syria chemical 'attack': Father mourns twins Aya and Ahmed
Transcription (the translation is in the video too, so just watch that):

At 18:40 the plane hit my house. We didn't feel any gas or anything. I have twins aged 10 months, and my wife. I carried them outside the house. While taking the kids out, people told me there's another strike at my family's house. all your family are dead. People were collapsing while talking to me. I ran to my family's house. When I got to the house, I first found my brother, Yasser, dead. (Other brother) AbdulKareem, dead. Shaima, my niece, dead. Hammoudi my nephew, dead. Ammar, dead. I tried to help the neighbors but they were all dead. I fainted. I returned after four hours to ask where my kids were. I left them okay. I found them all dead. They suffocated to death by gas. Allah takes revenge. What's their fault, Ahmad and Aya? When I left Amad and Aya they were in good condition. What's their fault? My sweethearts, I left htem okay. I went to help others and thought my kids were okay. I went and returned to find everybody dead and my kids dead. They left and I haven't had enough of them. My sweethearts, Ahmad and Aya. May Allah accept you.

 

[TestifyToTruth]

This is certainly a heart-rending story from the BBC. The question is - how true is it?

Is it exactly as the man says? He seems to finally add "gas" as an afterthought.

Was his house destroyed and family killed by a stray Syrian airforce bomb (the US air strikes in Mosul and Raqqa last few weeks killed several hundred civilians in each city, "collateral damage" happens) and then did a Syrian airforce bomb hitting the al-Qaeda (aka HTS aka al-Nusra) weapons depot explode some al-Qaeda chemical weapons (this is what Syrian govt and Russia claim happened) and the gas then came over his house. That is quite plausible from the way he gives his story.

Or is it all a complete fabrication? That sounds heartless. But listen to a former British Ambassador to Syria who points out that repeatedly al-Qaeda type terrorists and the "White Helmets" fabricate stories that the Western media run with:

Also unless you read beyond the mainstream Western media you wouldn't know things like Egyptian police arresting rebel groups making propaganda films with makeup for injuries in Egypt and pretending it is in Aleppo Syria: 5 Arrested After Egyptian Police Bust Staged Photo Shoot Of "Wounded Aleppo Children" | Zero Hedge

Watching Abdel Hamid Yousef, it does seem possible he is acting - it is similar to other staged videos of alleged but fake "Assad atrocities", but of course that could be a dreadful mistake to make too.

The truth is you cannot trust the media to give the truth on Syria.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Watching Abdel Hamid Yousef, it does seem possible he is acting - it is similar to other staged videos of alleged but fake "Assad atrocities", but of course that could be a dreadful mistake to make too.

The truth is you cannot trust the media to give the truth on Syria.

Have some shame.

Do you not trust the people on the ground who know it is the regime who attacked them? Do you not trust the victims?

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Abdul Hamid Yousef lost about 25 members of his family in the sarin attack, including his wife and 10-month-old twins, 2 brothers, their children, and their cousins. Here are his twins, Aya and Ahmad, when they were alive:

Their father said on CNN before breaking down into tears:

"What international community is this that doesn't listen to people? Is there even a humanitarian conscience still? There aren't any left. And all the Arab leaders, they're all asleep! And the US does whatever suits its interests. And the Russians have their own interests with Bashar, their tyrant. My children aren't the first to be martyred."

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156371129926509

"My entire family's gone." This Syrian man says around 25 of his family members died in the chemical attack including his wife and two twin babies. 'My entire family's gone': Syrian man says 25 relatives died in strike - CNN.com

Another video on BBC: Syria chemical 'attack': Father mourns twins Aya and Ahmed
Transcription (the translation is in the video too, so just watch that):

More about him:

After the burial, “I saw Ahmad and Aya, and carried them close to my heart,” Mr. al-Yousef said in the interview. “We buried them, I took Ahmad and Aya and buried them. I buried my own children.”

‘I Buried My Own Children’: A Syrian Father’s Grief

After burying his wife and children (and other family members), he said to his wife, "Dalal, take care of our kids"

"Until we draw our last breath"

The parts not mentioned earlier in the CNN interview:
"I lost twin children, and my brothers. Praise be to God for all. My wife! My son!
My children are now with God, whose grace is better than all these Presidents.
Even though they're very beautiful. As beautiful as their mother. Praise be to God.
I used to say, "My beautiful blonde girl, I would never leave you." My beautiful daughter, you're leaving me alone. Dalal, take care of the children.
All people hear are facts with no background on the situation. About sarin gas and the criminal regime. But they need to see the reality on the ground. We are strong and patient. We are steadfast here until we draw our last breath."

And an article which includes statements from AbdulHamid Yusuf's cousin who says the opposition would not target its own people (like some are ludicrously claiming to try to defend Assad):

"The death toll has reached 86, 30 of whom children, making it the deadliest chemical assault since 2013, when the Syrian government dropped sarin on a suburb of Damascus suburbs, killing hundreds of people as they slept."

“There are no warehouses, no factories anywhere in Khan Sheikoun,” Mr Youssef told the Telegraph. “There aren’t even any fighters, just civilians who are trying to survive.

"The opposition would never chemical bomb its own people,” he said.

Syria gas attack: Sobbing father cradles his dead twins after 19 family members die in Idlib sarin poisoning

 

[Vylo]

Quite right, the rebels/terrorists have a track record of doing gas attacks and then (with Western mainstream media support) blame the Assad govt. They usually time such attacks when the Syrian army and its Russian/Iranian/Hezbollah allies are winning and just before a major peace talks conference in Europe. The Assad govt has absolutely no benefit in this timing. It is a pattern. But you only know the pattern if you read beyond US mainstream media (which censored the report by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh that exposed al-Nusra rebels/terrorists as behind the 2013 Ghouta sarin gas attack in Syria that was blamed on the Assad govt.)

There has been no determined source for the attack. The weapons were known to have been part of the Syrian army's stockpile, but rebels could have looted it. There were suspicious munitions among the rebels at the time, but the regime had better means to deliver the attack in the manner it happened, as well as facilities to produce the weapons used. So it is very difficult to determine who did it. Both sides had motive, means, and the opportunity to strike using the weapons.

 

[Redac]

There has been no determined source for the attack. The weapons were known to have been part of the Syrian army's stockpile, but rebels could have looted it. There were suspicious munitions among the rebels at the time, but the regime had better means to deliver the attack in the manner it happened, as well as facilities to produce the weapons used. So it is very difficult to determine who did it. Both sides had motive, means, and the opportunity to strike using the weapons.

Here's the thing for me: I can't see what motive Assad would have for doing this. By all accounts he's slowly winning the war. He has Russian support, he's finally got the US to back off and say they're not gonna interfere, and so on. So why on Earth would he go and do the one thing that not only seems entirely unnecessary in the context of the greater war effort, but that would also get the United States to actually step in and act against him? They're not stupid; they must have known that this sort of thing would have got the West to rally against him.

Has someone really shown a good reason for Assad to have done this? I haven't seen it, and I simply can't fathom why the Syrian government would have ordered this attack.

 

[All Englands Skies]

Here's the thing for me: I can't see what motive Assad would have for doing this. By all accounts he's slowly winning the war. He has Russian support, he's finally got the US to back off and say they're not gonna interfere, and so on. So why on Earth would he go and do the one thing that not only seems entirely unnecessary in the context of the greater war effort, but that would also get the United States to actually step in and act against him? They're not stupid; they must have known that this sort of thing would have got the West to rally against him.

Has someone really shown a good reason for Assad to have done this? I haven't seen it, and I simply can't fathom why the Syrian government would have ordered this attack.

because the Islamists are losing, so their has to be an excuse for the Saudi's attack dog (the USA) to swoop in and change the tide.

All these wars follow the same format, USA stands back, allows atrocities to happen, which outrages Muslims and fundamentalist Islam grows from it, than there is a belated USA response.

The Saudis. the fathers of Islamic fundamentalism use their oil to get the USA/West to do their bidding, Oil keeps everything going, all society and its luxuries would grind to a halt without it, so the west does anything to keep the Saudis sweet, the Saudi Fundamentalists don't want quick wars, they want wars that cause enough outrage to swell Islamic movements, then once enough outrage is caused, they give the US the green light to go in and strengthen the Islamic cause (though by then the US has left it too long to stop any hatred directed at them by Muslims). it is a tried and tested formula, that was used in Bosnia, these wars help fuel worldwide jihad, the Saudis carefully engineer the way the wars are run, they wait, never getting the US/West to attack too early, as that would ruin the wider conspiracy of making the Jihad movement grow, then once enough anger has built up and done its job, they then get the US/west to act, to then take that land for Islamism or to create a power vacuum Islamists can swoop in the future. The USA is not at war with Islam (though it sometimes does things to make out it is) but is in fact the Opposite, it goes after the "secular Strong men" of the Middle East, Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, so then Islamism fill the vacuum left by their removal, while supporting more fundamentalist Islamic governments.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

There has been no determined source for the attack. The weapons were known to have been part of the Syrian army's stockpile, but rebels could have looted it. There were suspicious munitions among the rebels at the time, but the regime had better means to deliver the attack in the manner it happened, as well as facilities to produce the weapons used. So it is very difficult to determine who did it. Both sides had motive, means, and the opportunity to strike using the weapons.

The rebels had no motive to kill their own families, loved ones, and expose themselves to sarin. They always seek to make freeing their women and children the first priority in prisoner exchanges. How does it make sense that they would kill their own? When one of the rebels used a very indiscriminate weapon in a certain region filled with civilians, the act was condemned by the opposition as a whole. They generally fight according to the principles of Islaam and general human morality. Assad's side does not.

The rebels also did not have the means because they could not possibly have had the amount of sarin required. Sarin requires being premixed and the rebels don't have the equipment required.

If they did have sarin all this time and the means with which to use it, the only people they could come up with to use the nerve agent on were themselves? They wouldn't have thought of striking the regime with it?

Here's the thing for me: I can't see what motive Assad would have for doing this. By all accounts he's slowly winning the war. He has Russian support, he's finally got the US to back off and say they're not gonna interfere, and so on. So why on Earth would he go and do the one thing that not only seems entirely unnecessary in the context of the greater war effort, but that would also get the United States to actually step in and act against him? They're not stupid; they must have known that this sort of thing would have got the West to rally against him.

Has someone really shown a good reason for Assad to have done this? I haven't seen it, and I simply can't fathom why the Syrian government would have ordered this attack.

Has someone really shown a good reason for Assad to have been committing ethnic cleansing, genocide, and killing people with chlorine gas, barrel bombs, incendiary weapons, cluster munitions, starvation? He's a genocidal, brutal tyrant whose supporters always say, "Assad or we burn the country". He's been committing a genocide without the world lifting a finger against him militarily for 6 years. Why would he have thought there would actually be a limit? And even if he thought there was a limit, he didn't care in 2011 when he kept on responding to peaceful protests with fatal brutality.

Instead of apologizing and listening to the demands of the protesters in 2011 after schoolboys were arrested and tortured by the regime for anti-regime graffiti, he escalated. He was that stupid. He was that brutal.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10156378718761509

Through tears, this 13-year-old Syrian boy recounts his story of the gas attack, which killed 19 members of his family Syria chemical attack: Teen who lost 19 family members -- 'I saw the explosion' - CNN.com

He first introduced his grandmother, 55-year-old Aisha Al-Tilawi, who lay on a bed with an oxygen mask on her mouth, her chest rising and falling quickly. [...] She said she saw blue and yellow after the bomb dropped near her home. "We started choking, felt dizzy, then fainted. Mazin was trying to wake up his grandfather," she said.

[...]"I saw the explosion in front of my grandfather's house. I ran to their house barefoot, I saw my grandfather sitting ... suffocated," he said, putting his head to the side and rolling his eyes up. "Then I became dizzy." "When I woke up, I found myself in bed, without clothing," he said, his expression reflecting the confusion he must have felt waking up naked in a strange place. "I thought I was in the clinic in Khan Shaikhoun. I turned to the guy in the bed next to me and said 'We need to get out of here. The planes will hit us again.'"

[...]In all, he said, 19 of his relatives were killed Tuesday morning. When Mazin said that devastating number, his voice cracked. He lost his struggle to maintain self-control. His face contorted, his red eyes filled with tears. He plopped down sobbing on the plastic chair in the hospital corridor. Mazin is only 13 years old. He is a child. And this is his world.

Teen lost 19 family members in Syria chemical attack: 'I saw the explosion'

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

This was not the first-time Assad has used chemical weapons. But it must be the last. In 2013, I abstained on the coalition’s plans against Assad, following a similar chemical attack then. In hindsight, seeing what has unfolded now, I believe I should have supported the action.

This is why Liberal Democrats will not condemn the action taken by Donald Trump last night, nor the intention behind it. We still believe in the doctrine of responsibility to protect, and there can be no clearer-cut case in which to invoke that then the use of these evil weapons.

Why I support Trump’s Syria strike – Tim Farron

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

"The Guardian, the first western media organisation to visit the site of the attack, examined a warehouse and silos directly next to where the missile had landed, and found nothing but an abandoned space covered in dust and half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure.

[...]“You can look at it ; there’s nothing there except maybe some grain and animal dung, and there’s even a dead goat there that suffocated in the attack,” one person said. Residents responded in disbelief to the Russian allegation.

[...]There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road.

[...]“Thank God there is a Day of Judgment in the afterlife.”"

'The dead were wherever you looked': inside Syrian town after gas attack
Exclusive: Kareem Shaheen reports from Khan Sheikhun, where he was the first reporter from western media to reach the site of this week’s devastating atrocity

 

[Landon Caeli]

Martyrs go to parasise. It's going to be okay.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

Martyrs go to parasise. It's going to be okay.

Of course they go to Paradise and of course it will be okay when my Lord is the most Just and does not wrong a soul. Assad and his allies will not get away with it on the Day of Judgement even if the world lets them get away with it in this life.

Ibn Al-Qayyim reported: Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said to me, “What can my enemies do to me? My paradise and my garden are in my heart. They are with me wherever I go and they never leave me. If I am imprisoned, then it is seclusion for worship. If I am killed, then it is martyrdom. If they expel me from the land, then it is tourism.”

And Ibn Taymiyyah died in prison.

That being said, it doesn't absolve oppressors in this world.

 

[LoveBeingAMuslimah]

From last month:

United Nations war crimes investigators have formally blamed the Syrian government for a sarin attack on the town of Khan Sheikhun in April that killed at least 83 people and wounded almost 300 more.

Syrian regime dropped sarin on rebel-held town in April, UN confirms

From yesterday:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia cast a veto at the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday preventing the renewal of the mandate for a mission that investigates the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
[...]
“Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, traveling in Africa, said in a statement.

Russia vetoes extension of mission probing chemical weapons use in Syria