Are we going to war?

[Workingman]

I hope not, but the signs are not good.

The Skripals were poisoned by novichok, there is no doubt about that, but who did it? The West is adamant that it was Russia and so we have had a campaign of blame with no real proof.

We now have an 'alleged' gas attack in Douma and the Syrian regime, backed by Russia, is to blame, but we have no independent proof for that either.

This realy could end up as a proxy war betweet the US, NATO and the West v Russia, Iran and other allies in the ME.

If we are not careful it could break out into a more international conflict.

[cromwell]

Given how erratic Trump is, anything could happen.

We should stay well out of this! This isn't some Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi we're talking about, this is Russia. A major nuclear power.

Syria is a dirty war and the people fighting Assad are imo worse than he is, which is saying something.

The foreign policy of the west in the middle east seems to be to attack countries and leave them in a worse state than they were before. To me it's unjustifiable. What right have we got to do this?

The Saudis hate the Iranians, the Iranians hate the Saudis and Israel, Israel hates Iran (who sponsor Hezbollah, terrorists who want to destroy Israel).
Russia backs Iran and Syria, the US backs the Saudis and Israel.

Saudi private citizens have sponsored ISIS, terrorists and murderers who commit terrorism in Europe.

There is not much support for war in the UK and thank God for that.

Put it this way - if Tony Blair thinks we should launch air strikes you can be pretty sure that's the wrong thing to do!

[AliasAggers]

Are we going to war?

It's certainly on the cards now.

[TheOstrich]

I simply can't understand all this clamour regarding "no real proof".

What are you after, a signed confession by Putin enscribed on vellum?

As far as I'm concerned, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a ytka.

[Workingman]

A signed admission from Putin, I do not think so, but there are inconsistencies with the UK position.

The Skripals were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury - that is true.

We were told that they had been poisoned with a nerve agent - also true.

We were told the nerve agent was identified as Novichok, a highly toxic and deadly nerve agent, even in small doses - hmmm.

Places where the Skripals had been known to have visited were sealed off, including their home, a pub, a restaurant and a cemetery - correct procedure.

The novichok is said to have been administered by smearing it on the doorknob of the Skripal's home.

Then it all gets burred.

About 130 peopel were assumed to have been in contact with the Skirpals as they went around Salisbury, yet only one, a policeman who administered first aid, became a victim and his recovery was fairy swift.

The other potential contacts were told to wash their clothes... that was then upgraded to bag them and take them to be incinerated.

The places visited were decontaminated and the bench removed - a bit late in the day.

The OPCW were brought in and their scientists confirmed it was an agent of the Novichok family and that it was a very high grade agent, military-grade, only capable of being produced by a state laboratory. They did not say where it was produced.

If novichok is as deadly as claimed then why are the Skripals not dead? Why were their potential contacts not hospitalised - at least for decontamination, and why was only one other person made (mildly) ill? It does not add up.

When it comes to the Syrian use of chemical weapons the issue is also blurred.

One group claims 70 dead and some 500 injured Another, a UK based observation, claims 14 dead and dozens injured All we have had are athe same videos of the same few people being rinsed clean with running water, with a few being administered with asthma inhalers.

Did it really happen? We do not know, but I offer this from Wikipedia©:

In the US, a freight train derailed in South Carolina in 2005, releasing an estimated 11,500 gallons of chlorine gas. As a result, nine people died, and at least 529 persons sought medical care. In 2004 in Texas a freight train accident released 90,000 pounds of chlorine gas and other toxic chemicals. Forty-four persons were injured, including three who died. In August 2002 in Missouri, approximately 16,900 pounds of chlorine gas were released from a railroad tanker car when a flex hose ruptured during unloading at a chemical plant. Sixty-seven persons were injured.

Note the injuries and deaths from the volume of chlorine gas released in those accidents. Now, can any of you imagine the military ordnance required to kill 70 and injure 500, if those claims are correct? It is not just one or two aircraft or a few artillery pieces, it is a sustained barrage observable from satellites.

Evidence?

If we are going to war please can we do it on real and uncontroversial evidence.

[Suff]

Syria is a dirty war and the people fighting Assad are imo worse than he is, which is saying something.

The foreign policy of the west in the middle east seems to be to attack countries and leave them in a worse state than they were before. To me it's unjustifiable. What right have we got to do this?

And that, as they say, is all that needs to be said. We had our opportunity to do something about Syria and we tried to turn it into the next Vietnam, just with others doing the dying for us. Now that we screwed it up royally, can we expect much else than Russia should step up and support their ally?

One thing we really will find out, if we do send fighters over. Do these new Russian weapons really work and do they have them in volume? Because, if both are true, we will be in a whole world of hurt very shortly.

I'm sure we'll up the ante with missiles and I'm sure they will do next to nothing. This war needs to end and the only people working robustly to that end are Putin and Assad. So let's take the rhetoric out of it, the sound bytes out of it and the politics out of it. What action will end the war soonest and bring the killing and displacements to an end?

Bombing Assad with a few jets and missiles?
Defeating the rebels and stopping the war?

I, for one, don't want any civilian to have to face chemical weapons. However let us be realistic here. IS killed more people with swords than Assad has "allegedly" killed with Chemical weapons.

Think it through. On the list of "Weapons of Mass Destruction", I don't see a sword. That whole "Mass Destruction" thing is the driving factor behind many activities in the world. Because these weapons are, truly, capable of totally depopulating entire cities or even areas of population.

Sarin is what we called Blood Agent. It stops you getting oxygen from your lungs. We always understood it to be the least of the weapons we would face because we "only" needed a gas mask to protect ourselves. The strategic use of it was to keep troops in their protective gear whilst the attacking troops came over the hill without protective gear, full vision and full range of movement.

As such we hardly even considered it a weapon of Mass destruction. More a surgical tool to deal with discrete areas of troops.

I always like to know who is manipulating me. To know that, you need to understand what is going on.

[Suff]

If novichok is as deadly as claimed then why are the Skripals not dead? Why were their potential contacts not hospitalised - at least for decontamination, and why was only one other person made (mildly) ill? It does not add up.

I can answer some of that. Nerve doesn't work immediately, it does take a short while before it becomes lethal. If the correct action is taken immediately, then the chances of recovery is much higher. That is why the UK soldiers go into battle with NAPS (Nerve Agent Pre Treatment), tablets as well as atropine autoject injectors. Because immediate action is the surest way to survive.

If it had happened "anywhere" else in the UK, I suspect the answer would have been different. I knew it was a chemical issue only a few hours after the incident, because they had pulled everyone out of A&E and were doing triage outside. Had there been the slightest suspicion it was biological the opposite would have been true.

Nerve has very distinct symptoms, pinpointed pupils, excessive salivation and the overfiring of the nervous system causing the body to tremor and jerk.

I would suspect, with the close proximity to Porton Down, that the Salisbury hospital has specific training and antidotes to several chemical weapons directly to hand. They have the backup of a large military base and the expertise of Porton Down directly on hand, with a short phone call.

It is no surprise to me that nobody died and that more people didn't get sick. I doubt that would have been the case in, say, Newcastle.

That doesn't mean that a very determined attack with a chemical weapon was not carried out. VX has a lifetime of weeks out in the open. The perfect weapon to put on a door handle. But people don't just drop dead of VX nerve in a few seconds, even in the case of a massive dose of the stuff. That's for the movies.

[Workingman]

By today's definition wasn't a Lancaster bomber a WMD?

I think the residents of Cologne, Essen or Dresden might think so.

[Workingman]

Novichok has variants, and all are still more deadly than VX - some claimed to be ten times so. In the field we use atropine sulfate and pralidoxime chloride autoinjectors as antidotes, we also carried pyridostigmine tablets. Your average civvie does not have any of these and would be susceptible to the effects of even small doses of VX/novichok.

Nobody ever said the Skripals would have died immediately, but for them to wander round town eating and drinking seems a litle odd, to say the least.

We had photos of the dying Litvinenko in hospital, yet not one of the Skripals. Why?

[Suff]

Nobody ever said the Skripals would have died immediately, but for them to wander round town eating and drinking seems a litle odd, to say the least.

We had photos of the dying Litvinenko in hospital, yet not one of the Skripals. Why?

I'm sure we'll find out, in time, what happened. My suspicion is that they got it though there clothes in small doses over a period of time. I suspect the policeman went down so fast because he got a concentrated patch of it whilst trying t help.

The treatment for Litvinenko simply didn't exist. For the Skripals it did. I suspect there is a difference in the treatment regime and also it is possible that once conscious the Skripals asked for no photo's. Not unreasonable in these social media times.

We won't know for some time. All I know is that someone (or multiple someone's), is yanking our chain pretty hard and we need to be very circumspect before rising to the bait.