44's recent "red line"hello to the Wookie sized Dr General President for Life about doing ye olde Suriya al Kubra if nasty nasty agents like blood agents, blister agents and/or nerve agents make their battlefield debut is prett sweet!!
As one of the world’s leading pariah states, it should come as no surprise that the Syria of Bashar al-Assad takes enormous pride in the formidable array of chemical weapons it has acquired in order to sustain its rulers in power.Syria - like Little Satan - punches far above her weight class in diplopolititary deals. Instead of cool stuff like Hooters, literacy rates off the charts or creating advanced avionics - Bashar Bay Bee follows poppa Assad's script utilizing asymmetrical assets creating a slave trading Syria, abusing Palestinians as a strategic minority resource, literally bombing an Arab sister's political cadre out of existence, fiddling about with new clear WMD witchcraft, hanging with the most wanted terrorists in the world while maybe or maybe not enabling official enemies like Hiz'B'Allah with wmd delivery systems and frightened of Facebook.
Having suffered two catastrophic defeats at the hands of Little Satan during the Beatle and Wings era, Assad’s predecessors resolved to make the development of chemical weapons a central feature of military doctrine, to ensure that Syria did not suffer similar humiliations in future.
Consequently, the regime’s stockpiles of these internationally outlawed weapons now include large quantities of mustard gas, sarin, a nerve agent that repeatedly stimulates the body’s glands and muscles, causing breathing problems that eventually result in complete paralysis, thereby causing death. And just in case neither of these proves effective enough, it also has at its disposal reserves of VX nerve gas – arguably one of the most dangerous chemicals ever created – as well as stores of cyanide.
Nor do Assad and his cronies make any bones about their willingness to use this Aladdin’s cave of diabolical compounds against their many enemies. Responding to American intelligence reports last month, which suggested that the regime’s loyalists had begun to move its stockpiles of chemical weapons, Assad’s official spokesman, who had previously denied any suggestion that his country possessed such weapons of mass destruction, declared that Syria was more than willing to use them in the event of “external aggression”.
Oh Snap!!
That would — should — change ebberdobby"s equation.
Great Satan has long worried that Syrian stockpiles of such weapons of mass destruction — probably including nerve agents mustard gas, VX and Sarin gas and missile systems to deliver them — could find their way into terrorists' pecker grippers. There are tons of the uncool and - you know - "wrong people" in Syria and its hood, not all of them al-Qaida. The terrorists of Hiz"B"Allah, for instance, are close homies of embattled Bashar Bay Bee.
How would an anti-WMD operation by Great Satan and her posse of allies work?
Unclear. Syria's biological and chemical weapons are reported to be widely dispersed at as many as two dozen storage sites. Bombing such sites could be effective, but might also create a toxic cloud of chemicals that would threaten the local populace. Another possibility: Bomb access roads to weapons sites to make moving the chemicals difficult if not impossible.
A last resort: Send specialized teams to neutralize the weapons, possibly by burning them on site. Those teams would require coordinated air and ground protection, likely involving thousands of troops. Even then, it's not clear if Western forces would be able to destroy the chemicals or would have to attempt a risky removal from Syria. If the latter, who'd be willing to accept lethal Syrian chemical or biological munitions, even temporarily?
Despite those tactical concerns, 44 is right to make clear to Assad and his allies that there are inviolable red lines. While Great Satan has yet to order any military action, especial cats have "put together a range of contingency plans."
Pic - "Red line, bitches"
