US forces 'ready to strike Syria'

[flanker]

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I thought you said it was proven, what I got was that del Ponte had an assertion that Syrian rebels used chemical attacks based on testimonies--and that the team has to...

here's the update on del Ponte's probe...

U.N. rights team aims to probe chemical weapons in Syria - del Ponte - swissinfo.ch



apparently her team is drawing up a long list of alleged war criminals from the Syrian government--after interviews with senior defectors of the Syrian military.

naa pay pakapin, that maybe Putin and Obama should take into account.



Also with regards to the Syrian rebels allegedly seeking to acquire sarin components, that is an indictment. There are reports that there are rebel groups who sought to acquire ingredients to make Sarin, whether they are successful or not, we don't know--but with the scope of the August 21 attacks, the amount they could have produced would not be enough--and more importantly they do not have the means to deliver the nerve agent. What we do know is that Assad does have CW and according to the nonpartisan group, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Syria has the capacity to fabricate Sarin nerve gas AND they certainly have the means to deliver their warheads.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's sarin gas claim implausible - Fact Check - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Brown Moses Blog: The Mystery Component Of The UMLACA

del Ponte's statement last May was about the rebels using chemical weapons(I think around Aleppo area in March) is more credible as her team is the only legal body that were investigating in the ground. It means that the rebels has a chemical weapons as well not only Assad.

The link you posted is about the August 21 attack in Ghouta, which the UN will release the result could be today or this week.

I agree both sides committed crimes against humanity. Even Bush and Cheney are war criminals that should be tried in Hague.

[psyche54]

It is published in CNN na bai...

U.S., UK and United Nations documents on Syria

[æRLO]

Smoking gun.

(exerpt from the article)
Syrian chemical attack used sarin and was worst in 25 years, says UN | World news | The Guardian

Presenting the report, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: "This is the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them in Halabja in 1988. The international community has pledged to prevent any such horror from recurring, yet it has happened again."

However, Ban did not say who was responsible for the attack, noting that was not in the mandate of the UN investigation.

"It is for others to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility. We will all have our own thoughts on this," the secretary general said.

Presenting their arguments afterwards, western diplomats said the head of the UN investigation team, Åke Sellström, a Swedish scientist, had observed that the quality of the sarin used in the attack on western and eastern Ghouta suburbs on 21 August was higher than that used in the 1995 terror attack on the Tokyo underground or Saddam Hussein's attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja.

Sellström also said the rockets used were professionally made. His report said they were fired from the north-west, and western officials said the details of the trajectories confirmed that they came from an area held by government troops.

"All of that confirms in our view there is no remaining doubt that it was the regime that used the chemical weapons. It confirms that the regime was responsible," Mark Lyall Grant, the British envoy to the UN, said.

His American counterpart, Samantha Power, singled out evidence in the UN report on the calibre of rocket used, saying that in "thousands of videos" from the Syrian conflict there was no indication that the rebels had such weapons. Nor was there any evidence that the rebels possessed sarin, she added.

"The technical details of the report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this chemical weapons attack," Power said. The French ambassador, Gerard Araud, echoed her conclusions.

However, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, complained: "Some colleagues jumped to conclusions when they said the attack was by government forces. We have not even had a chance to look at the report. We have just had a quick glance. The allegations that it was the opposition cannot be simply shrugged off."

The Sellström report noted the kind of rockets used and pointed out that they had been fired from the north-west in the early hours when the air was moving downwards, maximising casualties.

"Chemical weapons use in such meteorological conditions maximises their potential impact as the heavy gas can stay close to the ground and penetrate into lower levels of buildings and constructions where many people were seeking shelter," it said.

The report said that one of the rockets analysed was an M14 rocket, which had been fired by a multiple rocket launcher. The second was a 330mm rocket.

Peter Bouckaert, a weapons specialist at Human Rights Watch, said: "The rocket systems identified by the UN as used in the attack – truck-launched 330mm rockets with around 50 to 60 litres of sarin, as well as 140mm Soviet-produced rockets carrying a smaller sarin-filled warhead – are both known to be in the arsenal of the Syrian armed forces. They have never been seen in rebel hands."

Flightpath of the warheads.

Dispatches: Mapping the Sarin Flight Path | Human Rights Watch



complete U.N. report (in pdf format):

http://www.un.org/disarmament/conten...estigation.pdf

[peacetalk]

The United States government reportedly warned the Syrian regime prior to launching airstrikes that hit Islamic State group strongholds in Syria early Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. President Barack Obama said the U.S. does not consider Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime an ally, but international law requires giving warning before attacking a country. If the U.S. had chosen not to inform Syria, it would be a breach of the latter's sovereignty.
"The Americans had informed the Syrian representative at the United Nations that strikes would be carried out against the terrorist IS organization in Raqqa,” a Syrian spokesperson said in a statement to local news agencies, the AP reported.
The Obama administration has been reluctant to intervene in Syria during the civil war that has lasted for more than three years and killed nearly 200,000 people. That changed once the militant group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, began to seize towns in Iraq and Syria, and released three videos purportedly showing the beheadings of American and British civilians.
The U.S. began bombing the militants’ strongholds in Iraq over a month ago and, for the first time, the U.S. and its Arab allies in the region reportedly hit 20 targets in Syria early Tuesday morning. The bombing was largely concentrated in Raqqa, ISIS's de-facto headquarters.
The U.S. had to prove that the current government in Syria was “unwilling or unable” to combat the militant group, according to the United Nations Charter. Iraq was a different situation in that the U.S. acted on the request of the Iraqi government.
Since he announced the U.S.-led coalition to combat ISIS, Obama has stressed that any air campaign in Syria would not be used to bolster the Assad regime, even if the two share a common enemy in ISIS.
"In the fight against ISIL (ISIS), we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost," Obama said in a speech announcing the air campaign on Syria earlier this month. "We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all."

US Warned Assad Regime Before Airstrikes In Syria

OT: Sorry mods.
Old thread na man diay ni.