"Has Assad Won the War? France Says He Has...." Topic

…. as Syria Warns U.S. Against Attack

"Syria's top diplomat warned the U.S. and its Western allies Monday that they were not capable of preventing his country from launching a final assault on rebels as his French counterpart appeared to concede victory to the Syrian government.

In an interview with Russia's state-run Rossiya-24 outlet, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem repeated claims that Western governments were plotting to conspire with militants in the last rebel-held province of Idlib to stage a chemical weapons attack and blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as a pretext for military action. The U.S. and its partners have twice responded with force to reports that Assad used internationally banned poison gases throughout a seven-year civil war against rebels and jihadis, but the Syrian government, along with its Russian and Iranian allies, has dismissed these claims and other allegations of war crimes as attempts to frame the Syrian leader…."
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Maybe… but now… how he can won the peace?

Amicalement
Armand

So, Assad and/or the Russians are planning to use chemicals again I see, and to blame others for it. Predictable.

I still think that most of these so called "chemical attacks" were either staged or never happened.
In most of the cases the reported agent was chlorine, which is in itself is not a chemical weapon, but widely used toxic chemical. You can find it in water treatment, chemical production, pulp and paper bleaching and many other civil applications. Even that it was used as a chemical weapon in WWI it is relatively ineffective, comparing to specially designed agents – they're deadly. Chlorine can kill you for sure, but you can outrun it, or get to upper floors, or use any gas mask.
If you're winning a war, and know that the consequences of using a chem weapon will be devastating for you, what is a point to use chlorine (or any other chem if you can't have an ultimate victory)?

Is being killed from chemical weapons worse than being burned alive like that Jordanian fighter pilot? There are many terrible ways to die in war. The main stream media loves sensationalism, and knee jerk reporting on the latest tragedy; and that's about all you get from them.

Modern conflicts are waged as much in the international "court of public opinion" as on the battlefield. Propaganda and underhanded sabotage to make the enemy look like heinous war criminals are tools the underdog can utilize to engender international outrage at the "transgressors" and support for the "victims."

It doesn't take much to rally like-minded and sympathetic western nations on your side when they helped to create the mess (i.e., Arab Spring) in the first place.

The fate of Syria's democracy movement was pretty much sealed when Iran and Russia intervened on behalf of Bashir al Assad. The US and Western Europe are unwilling to undertake another forced regime change in Syria given their track records in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. Perhaps that would not have been the case if the expected candidate actually won the last US presidential election but we'll never know.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

Agree with Barin….

Amicalement
Armand

Barin- Please spare us the regurgitation from Russian state media.

Well, if you want to beleive in what western state media telling you, it is up to you.

Whatever you might think, both Assad and Putin are rational. It is too easy to calculate the drawbacks and benefits of using chemical weapons against cornered opposition. I guess anybody can do it…if they want.

PS I'm a chemical engineer and had three years training on chem defence.

Barin- Yes, yes I do. At least I have a multitude of sources, from many different nations and with different viewpoints.
Why should I, or you for that matter, believe in a media/press that answers to one strongman in one country?
Your expertise in chemical engineering has absolutely nothing to do with whether Assad used chemical weapons on his own populace.
One can be "rational" and do bad things.

I can make a solid, logical case for gassing the entire rebel-held area in Syria.

It starts with the statement that 'because the citizens are not rising up against the rebels, they support the rebels.'

Then 'anyone who supports the rebels is an enemy of Syria'

'all enemies of Syria should be killed'

Finally, 'gas will kill everyone in the area, and there is no-one to be saved in that area anyway.'

It's horrible logic. Typing that out made me want to puke. But it *is* logic.

I'm leaning towards agreement with Barin. Assad can easily win the civil war without the use of chlorine gas or other chemical weapons. There's much more to lose than to gain in doing so at this point. The rebels in their last stronghold are already defeated. It's only a matter of time. Employing chemical weapons will do more harm than good and isn't in the best interests of Damascus politically speaking.

The people with far more to gain are those unscrupulous rebels who want to cause a false flag and blame it on the Syrian government. In so doing, they hope to draw foreign military intervention and keep the civil war alive. Not all rebels are unscrupulous, but any one of the more Jihadi factions (like remnants of ISIS) can try to cause trouble.

I'm rarely making lengthy posts, but I guess it might be necessary in this case to show why it is useless to use chlorine as a combat weapon in Syria and why expertise in chemicals and chem defense matters.

Let's start from the very beginning:
"By 22 April 1915, the German Army had 168 tons of chlorine deployed in 5,730 cylinders from Langemark–Poelkapelle, north of Ypres. At 17:30, in a slight easterly breeze, the liquid chlorine was siphoned from the tanks, producing gas which formed a grey-green cloud that drifted across positions held by French Colonial troops from Martinique, as well as the 1st Tirailleurs and the 2nd Zouaves from Algeria.[16]Faced with an unfamiliar threat these troops broke ranks, abandoning their trenches and creating an 8,000-yard (7 km) gap in the Allied line.
The disadvantages of cylinder releases were numerous. First and foremost, delivery was at the mercy of the wind. If the wind was fickle, as was the case at Loos, the gas could backfire, causing friendly casualties. Gas clouds gave plenty of warning, allowing the enemy time to protect themselves, though many soldiers found the sight of a creeping gas cloud unnerving. Gas clouds had limited penetration, only capable of affecting the front-line trenches before dissipating.
In what became the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans used gas on three more occasions; on 24 April against the 1st Canadian Division,[18] on 2 May near Mouse Trap Farm and on 5 May against the British at Hill 60.[19] The British Official History stated that at Hill 60, "90 men died from gas poisoning in the trenches or before they could be got to a dressing station; of the 207 brought to the nearest dressing stations, 46 died almost immediately and 12 after long suffering."[

Now, a bit of chemical trivia:

Chlorine required a concentration of 1,000 parts per million to be fatal, destroying tissue in the lungs, likely through the formation of hypochlorous and hydrochloric acids when dissolved in the water in the lungs.[24
1000 ppm means 1g/kg of air.1 m3 of air has a density of ca 1.23 kg/m3, therefore to have an effect you'll need to pulverize 1g of chlorine per each m3 of air in the designated area.
VX, supposed to be widely used as combat gas, has a letal concentration of 0,0001 ppm, therefore it is10 mln times more effective than chlorine. Some sources are saying that letal dose is 0.01 ppm, in this case it will be "just" 100000 more effective than chlorine.
So-called chlorine attacks, described by White Helmets were typicaly several barrels, thrown from a helicopter.

As seen above, at Ypres Germans used 5730 x 80 l barrels to achieve a break on 7 km front, and with relatively small amount of casualties.
Per various sources, Idlib has 1.500.000 to 3 000000 of civil population and 70000 to 100000 militants of various kind dispersed among them on the territory of ca 300 sq.km,
With average barrel weighting 80 kg, I don't think Syria has that much chlorine and that much helicopters to saturate air in Idlib so they can dispose of everybody there or even make a real difference in combat.

You can't solve the problem in Idlib with limited use of chlorine, and you don't have the means for unlimited use. If Assad had the means to solve the problem once and for all, as Lion suggests, he might consider risking potential retaliation from NATO…may be, but I still think it is too risky for him now.
Since yesterday Tramp has issued just another warning specifically against usage of chemical weapons in Idlib, and moved a lot of weaponry in the region, it looks like smth will happen there regardless of Assad ideas.

Also, yesterday on Guardian (and they're as anti-Russian as one can be) –

"De Mistura (UN Envoy in Syria )also said he believed both sides in the conflict might have access to chlorine-based weapons, describing them as in the grey zone between conventional and chemical weapons."

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And finally, I don't like an idea of storming Idlib regardless of weapon type the fighters will use. While it is almost impossible to split terrorists from civil population, you should not kill 10 civilians to get one militant. Hope the solution will be found…

One might imagine a bullet or two would have been more effective than Novichok elsewhere.
It's not always about the effectiveness of weapon A vs weapon B.
Maybe someone somewhere thinks that it's easier to pass off these attacks as fake if they use chlorine rather than nerve agent.

Thanks Barin!.

Amicalement
Armand

The "solution" has apparently been found.

Russian jets are pounding Idlib fairly hard now.

Perhaps the Novichok, radioactive pellets inserted under victims' skin, and various poisons used to kill enemies of Russia in the U.K. and elsewhere were self-inflicted too, just to embarrass Putin.

No doubt, it is a well coordinated plan to bring him down.

In theory, anyway, chlorine is the only 'chemical weapon' (in quotes because it's explicitly NOT listed in the chemical weapons treaties) or precursor still available in Syria.

Same reason we saw lots of chlorine attacks in Iraq.

I'm not suggesting that Assad gas his own people, Barin. I said that I can find a logic that supports it. 'barracks projects', bored troops sitting around asking, "hey, how would you do X?"

I'm not so sure about that, since it was believed that Sarin was possibly used in one of the attacks too.

I doubt Assad, and his allies/supporters can be trusted to divest all of their chemical stockpiles, and imagine they can either make, or purchase more, as desired.

The magic sock elf bestows his favors to all his little pets.

Even more ironically, Chlorine is one of the best neutralizing agents for most more-advanced chemical weapons, so you really don't want to ban chlorine!

The precursor chemicals for Sarin are also rather toxic and corrosive, and require special handling to make Sarin. Unfortunately, Sarin is an organophosphate, so any factory that can make organophosphate pesticides can make sarin.