Yet after Assad launched the first chemical attack and Obama did nothing, there were no other chemical attacks. We probably won't know for 50 years but it's possible something was done in secret or behind close doors. Obama was pretty good at that.
Didn't Obama claim all the Chemical weapons were removed from Syria?
- Thread starter wildchild
- Start date
Yet after Assad launched the first chemical attack and Obama did nothing, there were no other chemical attacks. We probably won't know for 50 years but it's possible something was done in secret or behind close doors. Obama was pretty good at that.
It brought America back to its longtime official stance (pro democracy and anti-oppression) after tillersons quote that Assad's fate will be determined by the civilians (who are still alive).
Of course we as talking about this and not infighting between kushner and bannon, healthcare, and Supreme Court nominations....
Obama didn't stop them from getting nukes you dunce. In fact, Obama's deal guarantees they will get nukes. The only reason they dont have nukes now is they are too stupid to figure out the technology.
Iran doesn't have nukes.Iran didn't get nukes under Obamas watch.Job well done from President Obama
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...32f4a8db9b7e_blog.html?utm_term=.b63143f2ccca
Netanyahu’s claim that Iran is ‘six months’ from having nuclear bomb material
They are very close, they are six months away from being about 90 percent of having the enriched uranium for an atom bomb.”
--Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Sept. 16, 2012
Israeli officials have a long history of claiming that Iran is close to having a nuclear weapon–indeed, in 1992, Israeli officials suggested Iran was just a “few years” from a nuclear weapon. So with that track record, the latest assertion by the Israeli prime minister might be easy to ignore.
But in this case, Netanyahu is on the right track. In fact, a case could be made that Iran already is ahead of his timeline. Note that he did not say Iran would have a nuclear bomb—just that the Islamic Republic would have the material for a nuclear bomb.
The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that Iran already has more than enough uranium enriched to 20 percent that could converted into weapons-grade (90 percent) uranium for at least one nuclear weapon.
An interesting commentary at ArmsControlWonk goes through the numbers, as does an article by Gregory S. Jones for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Jones notes that the the combined stockpile of Iran’s enriched uranium is less than one cubic yard--making it a difficult target for any possible nuclear strike. (Some of Jones’ ‘breakout” calculations for Iran, which have received publicity, have been disputed by other experts.)
By way of explanation, below is a graphic (which first appeared in The Washington Post in 2010) that demonstrates that the leap from 20 percent to 90 percent enriched is much quicker than going from 5 percent to 20 percent. But it would be a risky gambit. Most experts believe that Iran’s breakout would be detected by the IAEA and the United States, and there would be enough time to respond, including militarily, before Iran could make enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb.
Jeffrey Lewis, who runs ArmsControlWonk and is director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, added further context:
Iran is 90 percent of the way there.
Now, as my colleague noted, Iran is busy converting about half this stockpile into metal for fuel, so it would have to be reconverted to be further enriched.
So, how long will it take Iran to produce another 90 kilograms of 20 percent UF6?
Iran produced 43.8 kg since the last report, a period of about three months, so six months is a reasonable timeframe to produce about twice that much again.
Iran has been 90 percent of the way there before and probably will be again in a few months.
The important question is whether this is a significant measure of capability or an important red line. I don’t think so. Ninety percent is not one hundred percent, and close only counts in horseshoes. I believe that both Washington and Tehran are confident that the international community would detect an effort to use Natanz or Fordow [Iranian facilities] to enrich to weapons grade with enough time to intervene before Iran could produce a working nuclear device. (After all, the “90 percent” number counts only separative work, not the act of building and/or configuring the cascades.)
Iran is making progress toward acquiring a bomb option. This is a very serious challenge that should not be ignored. But for Iran to exercise that option -- and go the last 10 percent -- Tehran would need to reconfigure cascades and produce HEU [highly enriched uranium] over a long period of time during which IAEA inspections are certain to occur, to say nothing of the possibility that any order to do so would leak or be intercepted.
I do worry about secret locations and better centrifuges than the ones installed… If Iran attempted to reconfigure large numbers of cascades at Natanz or Fordow, the world would notice and Washington’s patience would run out.
Bibi’s “90 percent” talking point is simply a clever way to use the counterintuitive way that SWU [separative work units] and enrichment levels work to scare people into agreeing with him.
• Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment (Robert Parry)
On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid. One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus. In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.
[..] Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media. Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.
“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.” Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province. But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid. One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus. In this telling, the earlier ouster of retired Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser and this week’s removal of Bannon from the National Security Council were key steps in the reassertion of neocon influence inside the Trump presidency. The strange personalities and ideological extremism of Flynn and Bannon made their ousters easier, but they were obstacles that the neocons wanted removed.
[..] Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media. Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike.
“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.” Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
My agenda is intact. Trump's got hacked.
It's leftist idiots that supported killary( who was for this strike, and for regime change from day one) that are beginning to show their true colors.
They're already beginning to talk about how trump's making trouble with russia. lol
And syria is going to be trump's vietnam. smh
It's what i find so freaking disgusting about democrats. They're like the rebels in syria. Kill the people on their own side to win power.
Do you have a point?
My point is simple. Obama was a disaster on pretty much every front. Any questions?
When Bush came into office defense spending was around 335 billion,when he left it was 698 billion
When Obama came into office defense spending was 698 billion,when he left it was around 600 billion
Obama only went over 700 billion twice at 721 and 717,thats only around 20 billion more than Bush left and Obama left defense spending around 100 billion lower than it was when he came into office . Bush on the other hand left office with defense spending twice as much as it was when he came into office.
Thats the problem with getting your info from wikipedia. Any asshole can enter whatever numbers and it wont get changed until someone fact checks it.
Try this http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=539 It has defense spending all the way back to 1947 and not just a clip which only shows Bush's full term in office and then partial clips of other presidents terms. When you see stuff like this, you can be sure it's purposefully put like that as anti-Bush/anti republican propaganda.